


Rodeo

by de_la_cruz87



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Learning Disabilities, M/M Kiss, Male Friendship, Missing Scene, Will add tags as they come up, canon compliant (except for Estela)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27588986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/de_la_cruz87/pseuds/de_la_cruz87
Summary: I always trust my boys to have my back. And I trusted Monty... he taught me pride. He taught me what it was to trust someone. And I miss him.Monty and Diego's was a friendship worthy of vengeance.
Relationships: Montgomery de la Cruz & Diego Torres
Comments: 42
Kudos: 29





	1. Gasoline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego and Monty meet in freshman year
> 
> This fic will reference Joyride, the Clubhouse, Dizzy and Kitana. If you see anything come up that looks unfamiliar, it may have come from one of these.

**Gasoline**

Stupid, but pretty.

Like, the latter cancelled out the former, and that made it OK.

Like, sure, you’re a dumbass, but don’t worry – your latest selfie got 300 likes on Instagram. 

So, it’s all good.

But he hadn’t always been. 

Pretty. 

There was a time when he had been small and gangly, his knees and elbows too big for his skinny frame, his hair the kind of tight, wiry curls that were difficult to tame, when he hadn’t yet grown into the full lips or the sharp cheekbones and jawline he had inherited from his mother; and he had still been stupid then, but he didn’t have the excuse of being pretty.

When people called him stupid, now, all he could think about was sitting outside of the school counsellor’s office in the third grade, the heels of his sneakers propped on the edge of the seat and his arms wrapped around his knees, and trying not to cry, because they had figured out his secret. Through the blinds in the office window, he could see his _Tia_ Rosa shaking her head, confused, and then hurt, because he had been lying to her. When they got ready to go and visit his mother, every second Saturday morning, and she told him to pick a book to take, he picked _Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site_ every time. It wasn’t because, the whole time he had been growing up, Rosa had worked on construction projects. And it wasn’t because it was his favourite. 

He picked it because their bedtime routine since he had been five years old was to read along with audio-books on YouTube, and the song was rhythmic and rhyming. 

He picked it because he could remember it – recite it – by rote. 

His mother gave him that smile, the one that crinkled at the edges of her eyes and pressed her lips together, like she was trying to hold back a laugh, and she shook her head, her coal-black hair, cut into a blunt bob, brushing her shoulders.

“This one again, _mijo_?”

Rosa would lift her shoulder in a shrug, her cheek dimpling with amusement.

He would tell the story to both of them. Every page, from the crane to the excavator. 

And no one could tell that he couldn’t make sense of all of the letters or words. 

But that day, the counsellor told Rosa. That he could speak in two languages, but could scarcely read in either. That he could stand at the front of the class and present show and tell, but his spelling tests had letters written backwards or omitted, if he even attempted the words at all. That his state administered vision test returned a perfect result, despite that he seemed to struggle to read from the whiteboard. And when she came out of the office, she was crying. She knelt down in front of him, clasping one hand around his, where they were wrapped around his knees, and smearing the tears from her cheeks with the back of the other.

“Diego, I’m sorry, sugar,” she said, her voice soft and husky, the first one he had ever learned, even before his mother’s. The voice that had soothed him as a baby, sang him rhyming songs in Spanish, and told him _te quiero_ , every night before they went to sleep, and every morning when she left for work. “I’m sorry I didn’t see how you were struggling.” She squeezed his hands, and reached to brush her thumb over his cheekbones when he started to cry, too. “We’re going to get you help, OK?”

And she did. 

Rosa took Diego to meet adults who had him do tests and assessments, who assured him that there was no wrong answer, as if being instructed to read aloud for the class, or invited to the whiteboard spell a word from their homework sheet, and not being able to do either, wasn’t wrong. As if he was somehow supposed to forget the laughter of his classmates, and the concerned frowns of his teachers. 

They said things like _dyslexia_ and _hereditary_ and _tutoring_. 

He didn’t want to tell his mother, when they visited, but Rosa said they had to, and he didn’t take _Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site_ , that time. He just sat on the other side of the table and cried, while she held his hands tight and whispered that it was OK.

The learning aides at Diego’s elementary school in Oakland were overloaded with struggling students, and the education support program didn’t provide specialised support for dyslexia. They couldn’t afford to hire a dedicated tutor, or enrol him into a private school with intensive programs. So, because of him, they moved from their two-bedroom apartment in the city to a little one-and-a-half-bedroom duplex on the southern edge of Evergreen county, where they just scraped into the catchment area for an elementary school with a government funded special education unit that offered push-in learning and exclusive classroom programs. 

Some parts of it were good. 

He learned more letters and words, and after a year of being placed in an exclusive classroom program, with less students and more teachers, who sat beside his desk to work out problems together, and didn’t ask anyone to read out loud or come up to the board, he moved to the push-in program, which meant he could go to regular classes, and a lady with fiery red hair and a tiny, sparkling piercing in her nose came to sit next to his desk and help with reading and writing. 

Some parts were bad. 

When Diego was in the small class, the kids who went to regular classes didn’t want to sit with them at lunch. He sat with his classmates. Some didn’t talk, and others couldn’t. There was a boy who would sit at his desk in class, tapping his pencil fast and loud, and then suddenly start throwing things – his pencil case, his backpack, his chair, other students’ belongings – and wouldn’t stop until the security officers came in to take him out of the room. There was a boy in a wheelchair, who liked to tell jokes. At least, Diego thought they were jokes. The punchlines were often based on math equations or a play on words, and he didn’t usually get what was funny about them. There was one girl who signed, and could read lips, so he could talk to her, and she wrote down her responses, but he couldn’t always read them. 

When he was allowed to go to regular classes, Diego was the only one who had a learning aide, and at lunch time, the other kids laughed and said he should ask her to sit with him, because their tables were full. 

Sometimes, he went back to sit with the kids from the exclusive program. 

Most of the time, he just sat by himself. 

The worst part was, after they moved, instead of two hours each way to visit his mother, it took four – a day trip in Rosa’s big old pick-up truck. Long enough that they would book into a motel overnight rather than spend the whole day on the road. Rosa couldn’t afford to take that much time off from work, so their two-weekly visits became four-weekly. 

Every time she saw him, his mother’s eyes got dark, and she did that smile – the one where, against her will, the corners of her mouth turned down a little, because she was trying to hide that she was sad - as she said how much he had grown. 

When Diego got to middle school, his grades still weren’t where they should have been, but they were close enough to passable that he didn’t require an aide any more, and Rosa found a college student who did tutoring to pay for her school books. She came to the duplex on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons to help him with his homework. She wore her hair in a long black braid and brought him pappadums to snack on while they worked. 

Over time, Diego figured out ways to distract from what he didn’t want other kids to know about him. He made jokes, and offered compliments, sometimes played up in class when he was having trouble focussing or understanding the assignment. He pretended he was confident, especially when he wasn’t. He played soccer for a local community team, and they went out for pizza when they won games. Sometimes, he was invited to his teammates’ birthday parties. 

It made the days easier, having other kids to sit with, in class and at lunch, even if he still spent most weekends with Rosa, watching movies and cooking and tending to the herbs and vegetables that they planted in colourful ceramic pots that lined the little patio behind the duplex, tomatoes and chilli peppers, spinach, coriander and lemongrass.

“You sure you don’t want to invite one of your friends from school or soccer to sleep over, sugar?” Rosa asked, applying eyeliner in the mirror by the front door before she left to meet one of the site secretaries from the project she was working on for a drink.

Diego reached for the remote to change the channel to his favourite cartoon, _Generator Rex_ , and shook his head. 

He had spent years inviting and hoping.

He learned it hurt less not to ask.

No one wanted to be friends with the stupid kid. 

The summer after he finished middle school, Rosa signed a form so that he could get a job cleaning and stacking shelves at the new Walplex. It wasn’t fun – the cleaning products smelled like hospital floors and the middle-aged ladies who supervised some of the departments gossiped and complained about each other - but the junior trainees that worked in the bakery and butcher sections were only a few years older than him, and chatted with him in the break room or when he took trash out to the dumpsters by the loading bay where they smoked. 

The last weekend before he started his freshman year at high school, he and Rosa drove out to Chino, checked into the same roadside motel they always did, where the desk clerk recognised them and gave Rosa a key for a room around the back, the same one they always stayed in - two beds and far enough from the street to dull the sound of the traffic. They put their overnight bags in the room, taking only the items they were allowed, and went to visit his mother. 

When she smiled at him, it was bright and sudden, and full of wonder.

“ _Mijo_ ,” she murmured, looking up at him with dark, damp eyes, and reaching up to touch the edge of his ear, his jaw, his arm at the hem of his t-shirt sleeve. “You got so big.”

It was just as well – that he got big.

He started freshman year at Liberty High the following Monday.

He didn’t learn it the first day, but Diego figured out soon enough that there were kids that most people avoided.

One of those kids was Monty.

Some were scared enough to give him wide berth in the hallways, or to be careful what they said around him, and how. Some were wary enough to ask for a reassignment, if they were placed on a group project together, or allocated to the same team in gym class, although most of the time, it was safer to be his teammate than his opposition. Sometimes, there was even hesitation in the faces of teachers when he walked into their classroom, a flicker of panic, because they _sure as hell_ did not get paid enough to break up brawls involving a boy with all of the unreasoning anger and violence of a hurricane. 

Diego wasn’t afraid.

It wasn’t that he was brave. Not back then, anyway. 

Back then, he had just been lonely.

“Liberty’s going to be the start of a whole new life for you, _mijo_ ,” Rosa had insisted, looking at him over his shoulder, their reflections in the mirror dotted with flecks of water on the surface of the glass from changing and rinsing the guard on the clippers she used to refresh his fade, the night before he started freshman year. She curved her index finger around the shell of his ear, careful not to nick the delicate skin. “You’re gonna make so many friends.”

He wanted to believe her. 

He didn’t. But he wanted to.

Compared to his middle school, Liberty was huge, a sprawling campus of concrete render and glass facades, stretching from tennis courts at the edge of the woods on one side to the baseball diamond and football field on the other. Like most, Liberty was a school that leaned into its all-American sports culture, offering basketball and baseball, athletics, track and tennis, wrestling, cheerleading, and its crowning jewel, football. 

No JV soccer.

Despite that he was surrounded by other freshmen, just as small and naïve and hesitant as he was amongst the teenagers who stalked the halls, Diego felt uniquely alone. Liberty was the kind of school that was big enough to get lost in. Amongst hundreds and hundreds of kids, maybe, no one would care if wasn’t clever, or if he spoke with an accent, or if he didn’t dress like them. Probably, they wouldn’t even notice him at all.

Once, that had been all that he hoped for. 

But Rosa dreamed of more for him. And he wanted that, too. 

The other boy didn’t look friendly or approachable – actually, he looked sort of surly and defensive – but he was the only other student who didn’t appear to know anyone else in homeroom, the other kids chatting and laughing and sharing stories of their summer vacations, and the desk to his right was empty. 

Diego took a chance. 

“ _está este asiento ocupado_?”

The boy glanced at the empty desk and lifted his shoulders in a disinterested shrug beneath a black and tan plaid shirt. 

“Knock yourself out.”

He spoke without an accent, but had, it would seem, understood the question. 

It was a start.

Diego slid into the chair, slinging his backpack beneath the desk. 

“I’m Diego.”

The boy cut a glance in his direction, his expression flat.

“ _Orale_.”

He didn’t offer his name, or anything else, looking away again when Diego smiled.

But it was something. 

Diego didn’t want to come across too eager, too desperate, so he left the boy alone, watching him quietly at his periphery. The boy bounced his heel beneath his chair, as if there was somewhere else he needed to be, and worried his lower lip with his tongue and teeth, pausing the agitated actions only to respond to roll call.

 _Montgomery de la Cruz_.

Diego thought Montgomery sounded like the name of somebody’s grandpa. 

When they were dismissed, the other boy grabbed his bag from beside his desk and left quickly, without saying anything to anyone. Diego took his time, retrieving his timetable from the back pocket of his jeans and reading it carefully, twice, and then again to be sure that he had understood and was headed to the correct class. The unfamiliar hallways were crowded and non-descript, the doorways and posters all looked more or less the same. Diego checked the nearest room number against his timetable, thought he must have missed a turn, and spun around to go back the way he had come.

A few feet away, the other boy – Montgomery – rounded the corner. He smiled, sudden and relieved, and Diego followed the line of his gaze to a girl a few yards away, standing with two other girls in short skirts and expensive sneakers. The girl, blonde and pretty in a floral dress, looked stricken to spot him.

When he stepped toward her, she shook her head, warning him away.

The rejection wasn’t of him or for him, but Diego felt it, anyway.

He knew it well.

A second-hand pain, like the ache of a phantom limb. 

If Montgomery was hurt, it didn’t show in his expression. He turned and walked past Diego as if he wasn’t even there, as if he were totally alone in the hallway. Diego wondered how he did that – hid whatever pain or anger he was feeling from showing on the outside – but he thought it would be weird to ask. He would need to think of some other way to try to make conversation in home room tomorrow.

As it turned out, he didn’t need to wait that long.

At lunch, Diego sat out at a table by the back quad. He hadn’t got to know anyone well enough to ask to sit with them in the cafeteria, and most of the kids there were eating from trays, laughing and chatting, clusters of Liberty Tigers varsity jackets and cheer uniforms, jokes and smiles and stories of summer vacation. 

A brown paper bag was tossed unceremoniously onto the table beside his own sack lunch, and Diego looked up, startled, at the boy from homeroom.

“You said it was Diego, right?” the boy said, more a statement than a question, as he threw his backpack beneath the table and sat down without asking or being invited. He reached for the paper bag, tipping out an egg salad sandwich, an apple, and two granola bars. If he intended to make conversation, he made no immediate attempt, tearing the plastic wrap from his sandwich. It was cut in rectangles, rather than triangles – the same way Rosa had cut Diego’s. He smiled, small and uncertain.

“Montgomery, yeah?”

The other boy spoke around a half-chewed mouthful of sandwich.

“You can call me Monty.”

On the first day, they had math together, and on the second day, English. By homeroom on the third day, Diego had come to learn that Monty was the kind of kid that people called stupid, too.

He saw it in the way that the teachers swallowed down a sigh when he raised his hand to answer a question. Half the time, it was deliberately wrong, an obvious joke or distraction, and even when it wasn’t, Monty grinned like it was while the teacher explained the correct answer with a tight, tired voice. 

Sometimes it was funny. 

Sometimes, Diego wondered why he drew attention to it. 

Later, he realised that, while Diego had been taught by Rosa and his mother how to defend himself against people saying or assuming he was unintelligent, Monty had grown up with the people who should have reassured him instead using those exact words for him. Rather than learn to reject the idea, he took those razor-edged barbs and wove them into his armour. 

Partly, Diego knew that it was because, despite what people said, Monty was clever enough to understand that letting others think he was stupid allowed him the freedom to get away with things that they would have otherwise expected him to know better than to do. 

Partly, Diego suspected that Monty accepted what people said about him because he thought it was true.

They met outside at the same table on the back quad each day during lunch. Diego was a little surprised, the second day, when Monty showed up as he had the day before, with two ham and cheese sandwiches and an orange. The third day, he was hopeful, and relieved when the other boy tossed down his sack lunch of a peanut butter sandwich, two apricots, and a muesli bar. 

Monty didn’t ask him where he went to middle school, or who his friends were, or why he sat out on the back quad instead of the cafeteria. He talked about skateboarding and punk bands, and the dirt bike he had saved up for over summer. He asked what kind of movies Diego liked, and if he played sports. He didn’t seem to mind when Diego stumbled and dropped a Spanish phrase mid-sentence. He asked him what it was like growing up in Oakland, and if he ever saw anyone get shot. He hadn’t. Monty seemed a little disappointed. 

That afternoon, they had History together, and afterwards, Diego tagged along when Monty went to check out the sign-up sheets for sports try-outs, pinned on the wall outside of the gymnasium. Frowning, the other boy glanced over the sheets for hockey and basketball, tennis, and then dug into the side pocket of his backpack, retrieving a pair of plastic rimmed glasses, which he put on with an air of defensiveness, as if daring Diego to say something about it. He didn’t. 

After another moment of considering, Monty reached for the pen hanging from a string beside the sign-up list for baseball. From his expression, brows drawn together and the corners of his mouth turned down, he could have been signing up for voluntary detention for the enthusiasm he showed. 

Diego raised a curious eyebrow.

“Do you even like baseball?”

“Nope,” Monty answered, writing his name in looping handwriting that looked like it should have belonged to just about anybody other than him – not unlike the glasses. “But my grades are for shit, so if I’m ever gonna get out of this shithole, I gotta get a sports scholarship.”

Diego looked at the sign-up sheets. 

He wasn’t sure he wanted to go to college, or leave Evergreen, but _for shit_ was an apt description of his grades, too.

And maybe, with a blue and white varsity jacket, that roaring tiger emblem on his chest, he would feel like he belonged.

“Sign up for football with me.”

Diego blinked at Monty, who had moved a few steps away and was writing on another try-out sheet.

“Nah, man,” he said, shaking his head. He smiled and shrugged when Monty looked at him. “Dominicans don’t play football.”

Monty snorted.

“The fuck does that even mean?” he muttered, mostly to himself, as he finished writing his name beneath the blocky handwriting of Luke Holliday. The list was long and crowded, but the only other name that looked familiar was Zach Dempsey, a boy from Diego’s Geography class, scrawled in the third space on the list, beneath Bryce Walker and Justin Foley – both written in the same handwriting. Monty looked at him expectantly, the pen poised over the vacant position beneath his own name. “C’mon, dude,” he said. “Try out for football with me, and I’ll sign up to any sport you want.”

Diego eyed him warily. 

“Why would you do that?”

Monty shrugged.

“Shit’s more fun if you got a friend to do it with,” he said, already starting to write the ‘D’ for Diego as he glanced back at the other boy. “Right?”

The afternoon sun through the windows at the end of the hall suddenly seemed a little brighter.

 _Right_.

Monty tried out for baseball and, together, they tried out for football and wrestling, even though Monty rolled his eyes when Diego chose it, and made a joke about him wanting an excuse to try to touch his ass. 

When Monty came to find him after last period on Friday, waiting outside of Diego’s Geography class with a skateboard hanging from one hand, to tell him that they had both been selected for the JV teams, Diego couldn’t help the smile that lit across his face, or the question that tumbled from his mouth.

“Do you wanna hang out on Saturday?” he asked. “You know. Play video games or something?”

Monty hesitated, looking down at his skateboard, and then shook his head, and Diego felt his throat tighten and heat rising in his cheeks as he fumbled for something to say – an excuse that would make the invitation seem trivial and unimportant – as the other boy shrugged. 

“I got plans with Bryce on Saturday,” he said, and somewhere beneath the wail of humiliation echoing around the inside of his skull, terrified that he had misunderstood the other boy’s intentions, had overplayed his hand, Diego thought there was a sliver of reluctance, or maybe uncertainty, in the other boy’s voice. 

Before he could come up with anything casual and unaffected to say, to brush off the rejection, Monty looked up at him, cocked his head, and said, “Let’s do Sunday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Comfortwriter28 for the beta checking, encouragement and help navigating the US education system!
> 
> The chapter is named after [ this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0EyM0rk0BQ) song, a trap remix of Halsey's Gasoline.
> 
> Next chapter will deal with what Diego knows about what goes on in the de la Cruz household, and how he deals with it. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. I'm excited to hear what you thought x


	2. Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego's perspective on Monty's homelife, and how it affects both boys, and their friendship.
> 
> If you haven't read it already, the end of this chapter heavily references [ the Clubhouse ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21604153), so you may like to read it first in order for the ending to make sense. There are also references to [ Joyride ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20942399/chapters/49790162) and [ Kitana ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27006190/chapters/65924659), but you should be able to follow along without having read them. 
> 
> This chapter is named for [ this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk36ovCMsU8) song.

Anyone who knew Monty and claimed they didn’t know what went on in the de la Cruz household was a fucking liar.

Diego included.

There were the obvious signs.

Monty was a physical kid. He played football and was one of the more _aggressive_ members of the wrestling team. He had a manual job, working with his dad on construction and demolition sites. The odd bump and bruise, a scrape or a cut, was to be expected. 

And aside from all of that, he was inarguably hostile and unapologetically abrasive. He rolled through the school like a battle tank, as if no one had ever taught him how to exist in civilised society, or told him that a punch was an unreasonable response to a disagreement on the field or an insult aimed at one of his friends. There was practically a seat reserved for him outside of Vice Principal Childs’ office, and every time she came back from a meeting or opened her door to find him sitting there, her gaze immediately went to his hands, almost always battered swollen and purple on the face of another student. 

Monty didn’t win every fight he got into, but he never walked away from one, not even when he should have taken the opportunity to limp off and lick his wounds, for his own sake. Sometimes, Diego jumped in to help him. Other times, he tried to pull Monty away. And sometimes, when Monty was so flooded with his own fury that it rendered him blind, and he would turn on Diego if he tried to intervene, he just stepped back, and watched. Because honestly, even though she had been the one who taught him how to fight - when he was small and would come home with scraped knees or tears on his cheeks because of some other kid at school, and she showed him how to make a fist, and how to take down a larger opponent with a vicious and unexpected headbutt - taking a detention slip home to Rosa was more frightening than watching Monty fight, and staying out of it. 

Even still – fighting and football and demolition sites – they didn’t balance the ledger of injuries that Monty wore on a routine basis. 

It didn’t account for the black eyes or the busted lips, the taped fingers or the protective stance and careful step that favoured one knee or ankle.

Then there were the more obscure clues.

Monty was a hurricane caged inside of a boy. He was incapable of subtlety, articulate only in feelings that leant themselves to being expressed in extreme measures; loyalty, jealousy, fear, and fury - king amongst all of them. His flight response was non-existent, crushed by the weight and mass of a fighting drive grown unwieldy and uncontrolled. 

At first, Diego thought that Monty had no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, no in-built gauge that told him when to back down, when to shut up, when to walk away. That maybe he was as stupid as people said he was. Over time, he realised that the gauge was there, and it functioned; it had just been calibrated to a threat level most people never had cause to experience, the scale starting so high that anything short of the possibility of grievous bodily harm didn’t register at all. 

Diego wondered, his stomach clenching with involuntary nausea, what it took to make somebody that way.

Back when they met, in a lot of ways, Monty was raw, made up of exposed nerve endings and pain receptors, the impact of every wound right there on the surface, and all of it driving him wild and unpredictable. Gradually, slow enough that Diego didn’t notice it right away – and then noticed it all at once – Monty coiled in on himself. He inverted everything that he was, taking the hurt and drawing it inwards to replace the anger, which rotated outwards like a gun turret and was stitched together like a patchwork of Kevlar plates and bony exoskeleton, a defensive armour and a weapons system packaged as cavalier disregard, a nasty sense of humour, and hair-trigger fury.

It was the kind of protection that no well-adjusted child should have cause to build around themselves.

Anyone looking could see it. If they chose not to turn away.

Because Monty never tried to hide it. Not from anyone.

If asked, he told the truth. Someone wanted to know what happened to his arm? His dad’s team lost the playoffs the night before. Where’d he get than shiner? His dad bouncing his skull off the bathroom sink for not changing the toilet paper roll. Did his parents give him a hard time for sneaking in late after the party on Friday night? Maybe – did his dad laying into him with his belt until his back and flanks were crisscrossed with blue and purple welts count as a _hard time_?

Diego saw all of it. And it terrified him.

Not just because it was confronting, and painful, and maddening. 

But because he couldn’t do anything about it. Not without making it worse.

He had tried, once. And it had brought everything around him crumbling down. 

So, he understood; why no one did anything.

Even though it made him feel sick, like that first Sunday after they met, when Monty came over to play video games, like he said he would, and his cheek was stained purple from the curve of his cheekbone to the line of his jaw, blotting out the freckles in shades of rotten plum. 

Like that time in freshman year, when Monty’s dad had somehow managed to stumble into a football game. He certainly wasn’t there to cheer his son on, so perhaps he’d just heard that the beer was cheap and that the stand was run by a pushover who never cut anyone off when they’d had too much. Diego had been jogging to the centre line, sent out to replace Monty, who had missed his last three tackles and fumbled a critical catch, the ball slipping awkwardly between his gloved hands as his father had bellowed from the fence line. _Catch it for fuck sake, you useless fucking faggot!_ Monty avoided Diego’s gaze as he headed back to the bench. When he reached the line, Diego had turned, following the collective gaze of his teammates on the field, in time to watch Monty stagger under a resounding slap. Diego stumbled over his own boots, his instinctive reaction to reverse direction, to do something. 

But Monty hadn’t looked to him for assistance.

He hadn’t looked at anyone. 

Not with expectation, or pleading, or recrimination. The man who had challenged his father backed away, and Big Monty spat on the ground at his son’s feet, and Coach Morris yelled at Diego to get into position, and that was the end of it.

No one said anything. No one did anything.

And Monty didn’t expect them to. He had learned, in gradual, painful increments over time, like breaking and repositioning the same bones over and over, that it was too much to ask.

It didn’t make Diego feel better about any of it. 

Not then, not when they met, and not after that.

It stained everything, like a slow leak beneath the foundations of their friendship, eroding a dark and fathomless sinkhole, liable to open up without warning at any time. They played video games and watched movies, told jokes and shared memes and passed notes. They went to football training and wrestling practice, pep rallies and parties. They sat with the other guys who wore varsity jackets and the girls from the cheerleading squad in the cafeteria like everything was fine. When Diego got up the nerve to ask Angie Romero on a date, after he got done laughing at him, Monty agreed to help him choose what to wear. Mostly, he just lay on his bed and made jokes about how he was going to put his foot in his mouth, because honestly, Monty didn’t give a shit what anyone wore, but Diego appreciated the distraction, anyway. 

And besides, he couldn’t tell Monty to shut up. Not after his Liberty Tigers tee had ridden up as he flopped onto Diego’s bed, exposing a stripe of blue bruising, the width of a leather belt, at the base of his back.

As it turned out, Angie was the kind of girl that said _I don’t mind, whatever you want_ to every question – where did she want to go, what did she want to eat, did she want him to walk her home, would it be OK if he kissed her goodnight – and it was all good, but Diego thought he wanted to date a girl with a stronger will than that. 

They didn’t go on a second date. Monty riled him about it, for a couple of days, but Diego didn’t mind. Most of the time, he let Monty’s teasing slide, because it didn’t hurt and it didn’t matter. Not really. And what the fuck was he meant to say about it, anyway, when he kept quiet about other things – like the fingerprint bruises on the back of Monty’s neck and the base of his skull behind his ear, as he grinned and made a joke about Diego having a Gindr profile – things that did hurt, and did matter. 

Nothing had changed by the Fall of sophomore year, when Diego squinted against the bright morning light and the headache gnawing at his temple as he stumbled into the kitchen, and groaned.

“ _Dude._ Could you not booty-shake on my aunty, please?”

The kitchen was brightly lit with morning sunlight streaming in through the window, and the latino-rap-trap remix that had been cranked up so loud it had woken Diego at the other end of the duplex throbbed from the stereo on the window sill. The small space was almost stiflingly warm – although that might have just been the sweat that clung to his forehead in accompaniment to the nausea that sloshed in his stomach - and smelled of buttered toast, fried eggs, spicy sausage, and _mangú_. 

Monty, standing at the kitchen sink in the boxer shorts and Liberty Tigers t-shirt he had slept in, wrist-deep in suds and scrubbing a frying pan, shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s all her, man,” he insisted. “I’m not doing anything.”

Helpfully, his _Tia_ Rosa turned the enthusiastic swivel of her pelvis from where she stood next to the other boy, drying utensils with a damp, colourful cloth, and bumped her hip against Monty’s thigh. Unhelpfully, and in spite of his protests of innocence, Monty grinned devilishly, matching her rhythm when her hands found his waist as she swayed to the music, singing along in Spanish. 

Diego muttered a curse to himself, burying his face in his hands. 

All of the liquor that he had sampled last night from the top shelf of Bryce’s bar was not worth this. 

“Oh, come on, sugar,” Rosa called, her voice bright and full of mirth as she twirled her hands in the air; her arms a swirl of dark colour, tattooed neck to knuckles with twisting coils of detailed roses in greyscale, red and pink. “You used to dance with me all the time!”

“Yeah, when I was eight,” Diego reminded her, but couldn’t help smiling as she reached for him. 

He took her smaller hand in his, watching her spin, his stomach churning for a moment with the topsy-turvy surge of residual alcohol at the twirling flash of her long dark hair, before she stepped closer and led him into a loose, casual tango step around the cramped but colourfully decorated kitchen. Her face lit with a warm grin as she reached up to rub the crust of hangover-induced sleep from the corner of his eye. 

“I made _mangú_.”

Diego looked over her shoulder toward the stove, raising a curious eyebrow.

“What’s the occasion?”

Rosa smiled, dancing away from him, her hips swaying in a loose salsa step beneath the oversized _Trojans_ jersey she had worn to bed as she moved toward the cupboards to retrieve some plates. She nodded over her shoulder.

“It’s Monty’s birthday.”

Monty, reaching for a dishtowel to dry the frying pan, avoided Diego’s surprised gaze, acting as if he couldn’t hear the conversation taking place less than three feet away.

“Dude?” Diego exclaimed, shaking his head. When Monty still didn’t look at him, he stepped into the other boy’s periphery. “The fuck? You never said anything.”

Monty glanced at him and, with a half-smile, offered only a shrug, as if he didn’t really know how to explain himself. 

“I snooped on his site access paperwork,” Rosa admitted, unashamedly, as she set mismatched plates out at the tiny kitchen table. She had been coordinating the demolition and refurbishment of the children’s ward of the Mercy Hospital complex since the town council had put the project out for tender. 

Diego laughed, and spoke over his shoulder as he reached for the shoebox on top of the refrigerator, where Rosa kept the bandaids, painkillers and other first aid supplies. He retrieved a packet of Tylenol and popped two from the blister packaging. 

“We gotta do something to celebrate.”

Monty stepped out of Rosa’s way so that she could retrieve knives and forks from the drawer by the sink.

“We don’t really celebrate birthdays-” he offered, with a shake of his head, his voice a little tight, in a way that Diego didn’t think he had heard it before. “–in my family.”

Diego tossed the Tylenol into his mouth and tongued them into his cheek to speak around them as he filled a glass from the strainer by the sink with water. 

“Nah, dude,” he said, taking a drink, swallowing, and grinning. “Fuck that.”

“I second fucking that,” Rosa agreed, enthusiastically, setting plates stacked with toast, fried eggs and sausage in the centre of the table. It was too much food for three people, at a glance, but she had seen Monty eat. She beckoned for the boys to come and sit down, and began loading up their plates. 

None of them said anything about the trail of boot heel impressions, mottled black and purple, from the side of Monty’s thigh down to his calf, sliced through by the ridges of a patchwork scar.

That evening, Rosa dropped them off outside of the venue in the warehousing district, down by the docks, where an all ages punk gig that Luke had been talking about all week was playing. _That’s the kinda shit you listen to, right?_ Diego had asked over breakfast. Monty, mouth full of egg and toast, smirked. _Yeah, man. That’s the kinda **shit** I listen to_. Luke met them out front, standing about a foot and a half over every other kid there, and wearing a baby blue polo shirt amongst a sea of black band tees, leather jackets, spikes and plaid. If it bothered him, it didn’t show in his grin.

Diego didn’t much like punk music – he thought that he might have caught three whole words through the screaming, even after four bands had each played forty-minute sets – but he liked the energy well enough. The music seemed to tear around the space, careening into every wall, thrashing and seething and crossing back the way it came, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. It reminded him of football; frenetic chaos, a controlled kind of violence, as kids threw themselves around in the pit, smiling with bloodied noses and red-stained teeth. Even the handful of girls sprinkled amongst the crowd seemed fearless, nodding along with the music, watching from the edge of the pit as boys in band tees threw themselves across the space and at one another. One of them, a girl with auburn hair and red Chuck Taylors, stumbled into him with the surge of the crowd, and flashed a quick, apologetic smile when he caught her, her eyes lighting with recognition.

“Oh,” she said, surprise colouring her voice when he ducked his head closer to hear her. “I wouldn’t have picked you for this scene.”

It was a strange sensation he never quite got used to – that kids he scarcely recognised in passing from the halls at Liberty High knew his name, and could identify him by sight. Sometimes, adults he was certain he had never met before recognised him working a shift at the Walplex, or out with the guys, and congratulated him on the team’s last win. It felt foreign, and unearned, the way that their voices brightened when they spoke to him, or the way that girls’ cheeks pinkened when he looked their way, like he meant something. Or at least, the varsity jacket did. 

He had never been popular before, and felt like an imposter, unworthy of the attention.

When he had mentioned it to Monty, once, the other boy just shrugged.

“Why not take it?” he asked. “Someone else deserve it more than you?”

It was an odd and unexpected lesson in pride. 

The girl with the red Chucks didn’t blush, but she smiled at him, and Diego shrugged. 

“It’s growing on me,” he admitted, and she cocked an eyebrow, amused.

It wasn’t his scene, but he understood why Monty liked it, the other boy’s face lit with a wild smile. 

What he didn’t understand was why that smile didn’t fade when the police cruiser pulled up to the curb in front of them when they went outside to hang out between sets. 

“You boys got a reason to be out here?” the deputy wanted to know when he climbed from the cruiser, hooking his thumbs in his belt. 

Diego glanced down, his gaze flicking to the gun holstered at the man’s hip, and bit the inside of his cheek. Evergreen wasn’t like the block in Oakland where he had grown up, it was practically a black and white nineteen-fifties fairy-tale of white picket fences in comparison, but his memory dredged the moment for him, anyway, Rosa crouching down in front of him, her hands wrapped gently around his elbows, his eyes on his. _The police are there to help you, sugar, but you need to be careful, OK? You be polite, and calm, and still, and quiet. You answer their questions, do as they say, and call me as soon as you can._

Diego was seven at the time. 

He was a lot older when he realised not every parent gave their child that advice. 

Luke, who had been chugging water from one of the plastic bottles they had bought inside, lowered it to answer.

“We’re just waiting between sets,” he explained, bright and honest, blissfully careless as he pointed over his shoulder at the building. “ _No Peace_ are on nex-“

“Not you, Captain America,” the deputy interrupted, looking at Monty, who stared back at him evenly, and Diego, who dropped his gaze to the bottle in his hands. “Cheech and Chong, here.”

“C’mon, Collins,” the other deputy, sandy haired with the name _Wynn_ pinned over his breast pocket, said with a sigh. He looked at the two boys, and past them, at Luke. “You boys got some ID?”

His tone was reasonable, but he didn’t ask anyone else. 

The sidewalk was full of kids. A few yards away, that guy Cyrus who sat behind Diego in Geography and his friends were laughing and talking loudly, squirting their bottles of water in each other’s faces, while the girl with the auburn hair shook her head, smiling at their childish behaviour. Diego tucked his own bottle against his side, pinning it there with his elbow while he slid his wallet from his pocket and retrieved his ID. Beside him, Monty passed his driver’s licence to Deputy Wynn, and his water bottle to Deputy Collins, who waved for him to hand it over, taking a suspicious sniff of the contents.

“You got me,” Monty said, his tone thick with sarcasm. “I was totally planning on sneaking a bottle of vodka to my dad in the drunk tank.” He looked up at the pitch black sky curving over them. “It’s dark out, so I guess that’s where he is by now.” Monty cocked an eyebrow, looking Deputy Collins directly in the eye. “Figured standing in a public place was a sure way to get picked up by the cops.”

The deputy’s hands twitched, and Diego’s heart bucked and reared inside his ribcage, while beside him, that fucked-up internal threat-gauge registering nothing at all, Monty didn’t even flinch. 

“Let’s go, Collins,” Deputy Wynn said before the other officer could speak, handing back their ID’s. “It’s the kid’s birthday. They’re fine.”

Deputy Collins didn’t look happy about it, and eyeballed each of them before turning back toward the cruiser. He tossed Monty’s still mostly full water bottle in the trash can to their left, then climbed in behind the steering wheel, slamming the door closed after him. With unsteady fingers, Diego slid his ID back into his wallet. 

Deputy Wynn hesitated on the curb, glancing back at Monty. 

“You know the offer still stands,” he said, with some familiarity, not quite smiling, but his tone inviting. “You’re welcome to come down to the gym and jump in the boxing ring any time.” He nodded at Luke and Diego. “You should bring your friends.”

Monty just smiled, shaking his head.

“No, thanks,” he said. “I get plenty of practice at home.”

Later, after they had dropped Luke off outside of his house, grinning and with a blood stain from someone else’s nose smeared on his shirt, Diego sat on the edge of his bed and looked back at Monty. In the one-and-a-half bedroom duplex, his bedroom was the half, originally designed as a study space with a thoughtfully installed closet and, hemmed in by his bed, chest of drawers and desk, there was exactly three square feet of floor space to curl up on if someone slept over. The alternative was the sharing king single Rosa had bought him for his thirteenth birthday. 

When they first met, and when they were drunk or high, Monty didn’t mind; they would top-and-tails, and most of the time they managed not to kick each other in the face. 

It had been over a year since Monty had preferred to stay up all night, or just leave, rather than sleep next to him. The night before, after Bryce’s party, Diego had been drunk enough that he couldn’t remember Monty driving them home, let alone where they had slept, and the bed had been warm but empty by the time the music from the kitchen woke him. 

Tonight, he thought it must have been a fluke. A combination of exhaustion and expended adrenaline from being joyfully battered by the seething tide of the crowd at the punk show, the quiet comfort of the sound of Rosa watching a courtroom drama in the master bedroom at the back of the duplex, and maybe, although he’d never admit it, a little bit of delayed fear, because Monty wasn’t as stupid as people said he was. He might not let himself show it, he might not even register the potential danger, the way Diego had been taught to, but the sheriff’s deputies were still the ones who dragged his father to the back of a patrol car when they found him slouched in an alley behind a bar, too drunk to walk, and who brought him home the next day, stinking of alcohol and vomit and urine, hungover and furious after a night in lock-up. 

Somewhere under the armour and scar tissue, cops still scared him. 

When they got home, Diego had gone to take a shower and, when he came back, Monty was asleep on his bed, his back to the wall and his feet at the headboard, a pillow clutched to his chest, the way he often slept: defensively.

While Monty breathed, quiet and even, behind him, Diego slipped from the edge of the bed to the floor, reaching to open the closet door. Tucked in the corner, behind an untidy stack of sneakers and football cleats, his helmet, and his Liberty duffel, was an old shoebox. It was battered by the shoes carelessly kicked off and tossed in on top of it, but he kept it there because, when he was small and couldn’t sleep, and the sound of sirens or shouting or occasional gunshots from the street outside of their apartment in Oakland were too scary to flee down the hall to Rosa’s room, Diego would crawl out of his bed, slip inside the closet, and close the door behind him. 

Inside the box, there was the blue fleece blanket he had been brought home from the maternity ward in, and the little cotton hat that the midwives had tugged down over his ears. There was a teether, shaped like a cookie cut-out of a rabbit, made of bright orange rubber. There were finger paintings from pre-school, a Christmas decoration made of painted popsicle sticks and, secured with an elastic band, his school portrait photographs, which Rosa purchased every year. At the bottom was a picture book, its spine weak and cracking with age, a cartoon drawing of a yellow excavator against a starry night sky and the title, _Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site_ printed in white. And underneath that, a book made of fabric and plastic, its pages sealed with sliding fasteners. Inside each page was a photograph; a small, six-page album designed to teach babies and small children to recognise familiar faces. 

Sitting cross-legged at the doorway of the closet, Diego flicked slowly through the book. 

The first photo was a girl, maybe seventeen, with eyes bright and dark like wildfire smoke, and long black hair knotted into box braids, wearing a kind of smock or hospital gown, holding a newborn bundled in a blue fleece blanket. In Rosa’s blocky, utilitarian handwriting, the plastic sleeve was labelled **Mama + Diego**.

The day that the photo was taken, he had gone to live with Rosa.

_Halfway through Diego’s first year of elementary school, Rosa was promoted to shift supervisor on the high-rise construction project she was working on, and had to start working weekends. On Saturdays and Sundays, Diego went to stay with an El Salvadoran woman he called Senora Marta, who lived a few blocks away. At her apartment, there was a painting of a rosy-cheeked Jesus hung on the wall over the television, which played Mexican telenovelas all day, and eight or nine other kids, laughing and screaming and roughhousing around the tiny rooms, bumping carelessly into the threadbare furniture. If their parents paid her extra, she fed them cereal three times a day – knock off versions of Froot Loops, Cap’n Crunch, Lucky Charms. Rosa sent Diego with his own snacks._

The second page was two little girls, one seven years old with fiery eyes, and the other nine with a dusting of freckles on her nose. Skinny, grinning and brown beneath the bright sun, one missing a tooth and the other with scabbed knees beneath the hem of her dress, they wrapped their arms around one another on the sidewalk outside of a city apartment block. The label arching above the photo said, **Luz + Rosa**. 

_The second weekend, as Rosa carried him home, propped on her hip with his head lolling drowsily on her shoulder, she asked him if he made any friends. “Si, Tia,” he said. “The boy with the robot toy.” She smiled, and held him closer to her side as they passed a couple of men slouching on the steps outside of an apartment block, who eyed them as they walked by. “You ask his name, sugar?” she asked. Diego shook his head, no. Rosa laughed. “What do you and your friend do together?”_

The next page, the two girls grown up, teenage girls in jeans with ripped knees and plaid shirts, wearing hoop earrings and dark lipstick. The older girl pulled a Rosie the Riveter pose, smirking and flexing, while the younger girl wrapped her arms around her waist, hugging her tightly from behind. Her smile was familiar, her lips pressed together as if to trap a laugh inside. Slung beneath it, **best friends forever**.

_”Eat,” Diego told her, his hand fisted in the fabric of her work shirt. “His mama didn’t pay Senora Marta, so we shared my snacks.” Rosa nodded tiredly as she carried him up the apartment steps. “That’s kind of you, sugar,” she said, pulling open the building door with one hand, cradling him to her side with the other. “You play any games?” He nodded, watching the numbers over the elevator light up as it groaned its way down to where they waited. “Si. We play with the robot. We play I-spy in the window for his mama’s car.” He rubbed his face on her shoulder, sleepily. “I wanted to play hide and seek, but he was scared to go in the closet to hide,” he said. “His new daddy locks him in there if he takes food from the kitchen.”_

In the next photo, he was five and sitting outside of a café with Rosa and her girlfriend at the time, Rosa’s hair falling about her shoulders in inky curls as she tipped her head to the other woman’s shoulder, smiling softly. Her girlfriend wore her flaxen hair scraped into a top knot and tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses, and had her arm wrapped around Diego’s shoulders. He grinned toothily, both hands clinging to a cup as big as his head, an elaborate milkshake dressed with whipped cream, sprinkles, and fudge sauce running over his fingers. There were arrows drawn on the plastic cover, labelling, **Rosa** , **Diego** and **Bridget**.

_Everything happened fast after that. Rosa lifted him away from her side to look at him, and asked him to repeat what he had said. When they got upstairs, she asked him to say it again, sitting at the kitchen table with Bridget, who asked him lots of questions. Did he know the boy’s name? No. Did he remember what he looked like? Blue eyes. Brown hair. Did he remember what the car looked like, the one his mama picked him up in? Was it big or small? Dark or light? He didn’t know. Could he remember anything else about the boy? Only the robot toy._

_After his bath and his book, lying under the covers, he could hear Rosa and Bridget in their bedroom, talking in low but urgent voices. It was quiet for a little while, and then he heard Rosa’s voice. “Hello. Yes, I need to make a report, please. I don’t have a home address, or any names, but I can tell you where the child will be next weekend.”_

_Diego didn’t go back to Senora Marta’s again._

The next photo showed the girl with the fiery eyes, maybe sixteen and this time with her hair clipped close to her scalp, one scrawny fist wrapped around the strangled neck of a black garbage bag stuffed with her clothes and belongings, standing outside of a house that made him think of the witch’s cottage in Hansel and Gretel, all painted weatherboard and sugary trim in white. The girl stood at the gate, newly arrived, smiling tightly, reluctantly, wary of the split in her lower lip. In the background, slouching on the porch steps and a little out of focus, was a boy wearing the same dimples that bracketed Diego’s smile.

_The next weekend, they went to visit his mother. He didn’t understand how it happened, how it all went sick and wrong, but after she hugged him and kissed his forehead, his mother and Rosa started talking while he drew a picture, and all of a sudden, their voices were mad._

_“You called CPS? Rosa, what the fuck? You have no idea what kind of fucking cesspit they’ll dump that kid in.” Rosa’s cheeks were red with anger. “I got a glimpse of the cesspit he was already living in, and I will not apologise for trying to help.” His mother was so mad, she looked like she was going to cry. “Like someone tried to help me?” she said, her eyes aflame, her voice rising. “You see where that got me. I’m stuck here while you get to watch my son grow up-“ Rosa’s expression was hard and her voice was hot and angry. “I’ve told you six thousand times, Luz. I didn’t report your mom. But, y’know, I fucking wish I did. Maybe if they got you away from that crazy bitch sooner, you wouldn’t be so god damn fucked up.”_

_They got louder. They stood up. Both of them reached for him, his mother lunging across the table to snatch at his arm as Rosa pulled him backwards by his shoulders. After that, he didn’t remember much, other than the security personnel, his mother kicking her legs and someone screaming, and the sound of crying._

In the next picture, the fiery eyed girl, a woman now, her hair cut into a blunt bob that whispered over her shoulders with raven brushstrokes and her face clean and beautiful, was sitting in a plastic chair on the opposite side of a metal table, her shoulders rounded awkwardly, smiling the way she did when she was happy, but a little embarrassed. Her hands were clasped on the table around a carboard party hat with the number 30 on it, the elastic chin strap removed. 

_That wasn’t the end of it._

_It was the start._

_When Rosa used her computer to request their next visit, like she did every other week, the screen said **visitation privileges suspended**.It said the same thing the next week. And the week after._

_Rosa stepped down from the supervisor job at work, so that she didn’t have to work weekends any more, and looked after him instead._

_Bridget came around less. When she did, she said Rosa did the right thing, she said “Luz’s trauma is her own” and “you’ve done the best you could, by her and by that boy”, but that just seemed to make Rosa angry and sad. Bridget packed her clothes and toothbrush into a bag, leaned down to kiss his cheek, and didn’t come back. She left an open package of chai tea in the cupboard, and a windchime hanging in the kitchen window. Rosa threw away the tea when they moved to Evergreen. She brought the windchime, but she didn’t hang it up again._

_It was almost six months before they were allowed to resume visits. When his mother saw them, her fiery eyes were dark and shadowed, and she opened her arms and hugged them both, Diego pinned between the warmth of her at his front and Rosa at his back._

_He didn’t know what ever happened to the boy with the robot toy._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to ComfortWriter28 for all of your help. If you're not already reading it, I encourage you to check out Step Bros!
> 
> The next chapter will be focussed on what Diego thinks of Bryce and his friendship with Monty, and will include an unexpected kiss for my fave problematic trash boi!
> 
> I've made a start on my next fic and am toying with the idea of a Christmas chapter (kitschy, for sure, but I am unapologetically obsessed with Christmas!), so I might start posting that one next week and overlap these two fics. 
> 
> Thank you very much for reading and commenting <3


	3. Rodeo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego's feelings on the subject of Bryce Walker, and Bryce's friendship with Monty.

Rosa said that he shouldn’t hate anyone.

She said that hate hurt him more than the person he felt it for.

Maybe that was true. 

But Diego hated Bryce Walker. 

There was a long list of reasons, starting with the way that he walked around Liberty High like he was King Shit, acting like he believed he was untouchable and beloved by all, and ending with the fact that those things that he believed were more or less true.

But mostly, Diego hated Bryce because of Monty.

At first, it was just a flat, featureless hate – a recipe made up of a little envy and frustration, a pinch of contempt and a splash of pride. He would never be wealthy or blessed or clever or _white_ enough to enjoy the kind of charmed and carefree life that Bryce had, the boy next door in a shining crown, everyone’s friend, everyone’s crush, everything to everybody.

Well, everything to Monty. 

Diego knew that when he said that Monty was his best friend, Monty couldn’t answer the same in turn. He wished it wasn’t the case, but he accepted it. After a decade of having no friends at all, he would take it. And anyway, Rosa had been right. Liberty _was_ the start of a new life for him. He _did_ make so many friends, just as she said he would.

Quickly, Diego learned that wearing a varsity jacket was like carrying a VIP all access pass at Liberty High. Being able to catch a football from time to time was like some sort of pre-qualifier for friendship, and he’d passed. Guys he didn’t know – who played on other teams, basketball, baseball, hockey, sometimes juniors and seniors older than he was – saw the jacket, and assumed he was one of them. Girls saw the roaring tiger emblem and smiled at him. He had no shortage of people to spend his time with, or invitations to hang out, go to parties, go on dates. 

There were things that people assumed about him because of the jacket that were wrong, too. That he was a bully, or that he used and mistreated girls, or that his life was easy and free of consequences. That he was some kind of base troglodyte incapable of empathy. That he didn’t know what it was like to be rejected or ridiculed. That he didn’t understand how it felt to be lonely. 

It bothered him, but he wouldn’t have given up his brothers for anything. 

It was like being part of a family and a fraternity and a militia and a cult. They fought for each other, protected each other, loved each other. It was intoxicating.

But as much as Diego had, Bryce always had more. Bryce always had anything he could ever want. Whatever wasn’t offered to him voluntarily, he took anyway. 

Bryce always had Monty.

The longer they knew each other, the more complex the alchemy of Diego’s hatred for Bryce Walker became. 

It built in layers, over the years.

Jealousy and distrust, contempt and revulsion, frustration and fury.

Bryce saw it. Bryce always saw everything, and anything he might have missed, he had _his boys_ to keep him informed of. 

Neither of them said anything to one another that wasn’t polite, the closest they ever got to open attack was abrasive-edged banter, but Diego got the impression that Bryce knew how he felt about him, because he didn’t try to win him over. Bryce called him _buddy_ and invited him to his parties and slapped him on the back to congratulate him on a successful defence on the field. From the outside, they looked like friends.

But they weren’t. 

Diego didn’t want to be Bryce’s friend.

He saw, first hand, how Bryce treated his _friends_.

In sophomore year, Diego told Monty that he had put himself up for captain of the JV football team. Monty looked surprised, then frowned. _But Bryce is running for captain again_ , he said, and Diego couldn’t help the frustrated, defensive edge in his voice as he replied, _So_? Monty just shrugged. 

Bryce won, because he always did, and the day of the announcement, as Diego headed across the cafeteria, preparing to respond with as much grace as he could muster to the goading he knew would be coming, Monty grabbed his elbow and steered him around, away from the table. _C’mon_ , he said, walking toward the doors that led out toward the back quad, _he’s in a shitty mood_. 

Diego looked over his shoulder at Bryce, who watched their retreat. His pride flashed alight like tinder at the idea that Bryce thought he could cast him out, and the knowledge that he probably _could_ , because he had seen him do it to others. The quick temper that he had inherited from his mother – the same temper she had been given thirty years to contemplate the dangers of - and the fight response he had learned from Rosa – who had headbutted the apartment building maintenance guy while carrying Diego on her hip when he was three and the scumbag had tried to touch her in the stairwell – flared red hot. 

He tried to yank his arm from Monty’s grasp, but the other boy snatched at his sleeve to keep his grip. _Why?_ Diego demanded. _Because I ran against him for captain? Fuck him, he still won. What the fuck else does he want_? Monty opened one of the glass doors and practically shoved him through it. 

_No_ , he said, following Diego outside. _He’s pissed because he found out I didn’t vote for him_.

Being Bryce’s friend meant sacrificing a lot.

Time. Pride. Independence. Choice.

In the hot and dry weeks that followed summer vacation, they often found themselves in Bryce’s pool house.

“Bradley give your class that family story group project?” Justin asked no one in particular. 

Justin tipped his head against the backrest of the couch and exhaled a plume of sweet-smelling smoke toward the ceiling. He had the heel of one foot propped on the edge of the coffee table, which was strewn with empty and half-full beer cans, open packets of pretzels and flaming hot Cheetos, and a few dirty magazines, tossed carelessly on top of a sheet of paper, candyfloss pink, **Bryce W.** stamped at the top in bold font, and a list of names and phone numbers laid out below it, _Hannah B_ ranked at number one. Its edges were crumpled. Months had passed since Dollar Valentine. Diego had no idea why Bryce wouldn’t just throw it away. Surely, he didn’t expect any of them to be impressed that he had matched with Hannah, when they all knew Bryce was the one who had started the rumour that branded her a sure thing in the first place?

Diego had paid his dollar for a questionnaire and a list, just like everyone else. He’d even gotten a date out of it – not with anyone who came up as a match, but with Sheri Holland, who had processed his questionnaire with a bright, dimpled smile. She had apologised for the wait, because there had been three other guys in varsity jackets lined up at her station ahead of him and, on a whim, because her smile was so sweet and pretty, he asked her if she wanted to go get a milkshake at _Rosie’s_ with him. They had chatted and laughed, and the milkshakes were great – her chocolate was better than his strawberry, he had to admit, when she offered him a sip – but they both agreed that they preferred hanging out as friends. 

Diego nodded at Justin’s left, opening his mouth to answer as he reached to take the bong that Justin offered, but Bryce cut over the top of him.

“Who’d you get in your groups?” he wanted to know, looking between Justin, Monty, and Zach, who sat away from the cloying smoke that hung about the couches, perched on a stool by the bar with his phone in his hand. He seemed to be scrolling back and forth, as if refreshing his social media apps, waiting for a message or notification that hadn’t, or perhaps wasn’t, coming. 

“Clay Jensen, Courtney Crimson, Skye Miller,” Zach answered flatly, and looked up with an unamused eyebrow raised, already anticipating the laughter before Bryce snorted, and the rest of the boys shook their heads, chuckling at his misfortune. 

Justin leaned forward to accept the video game controller that Bryce offered him from where he was lounging in the armchair. 

“Me and Monty got Sheri and Chloe Rice,” he said.

Bryce’s gaze cut sharply to Monty where he sat on at the far end of the couch, but the other boy didn’t appear to notice, his bloodshot gaze on the television screen as he navigated to start another round.

“Oh, yeah?” Bryce said, his conversational tone laid lightly over something hard and edged. “You find out anything interesting?”

Justin sat forwards, his elbows on his knees, the controller clutched in both hands. If he heard the hint of strain in Bryce’s voice, he didn’t react to it.

“Nah, we haven’t started yet,” he said, his glassy eyes delayed tracking the movements of his avatar across the screen, despite that he bit his lower lip in concentration. “Who’d you get?”

“Angie Romero, and that girl Nina, from the track team,” Bryce scoffed, shaking his head. “Fucking ice queen. Although she’s doing most of the work. Came up with the idea to interview each other’s parents.” He cocked an eyebrow, pinning Diego with a stare. “Our friend Diego here is holding out on us, though.”

Diego’s jaw tightened, and he lowered the lighter he had been about to flick to life at the edge of the cone piece.

“I told you, my mom doesn’t live in the county,” Diego said, an insistent edge to his voice. “My _Tia_ Rosa said she’d do the interview.”

“That’s not what we agreed though, is it?” Bryce’s smile was like sugar laced with cyanide, sweet and cruel. “I mean, you _read_ the assignment sheet, right? And all those notes Nina emailed ‘round?” Bryce offered a lopsided smirk when Diego cut a sharp look in his direction. “We said _parents_.” He raised his eyebrows, his expression a mask of innocent curiosity. “You do have those, don’t you? A mom and dad?”

“Dude…” Justin muttered, shaking his head, although he kept his gaze on the television. Diego didn’t expect any different. They weren’t friends. Justin was Bryce’s boy. All that connected them was their varsity jackets, the football team, and Bryce. He wouldn’t have stuck his neck out any further for Justin, had their positions been reversed.

Or maybe he would have. But not to protect Justin.

He’d do it for the opportunity to attack Bryce. 

The other boy was so accustomed to unquestioning loyalty and adoration from them that, when he was with his boys, he walked around completely defenceless, totally unaware of his surroundings outside of taking note of the fealty offered at every turn, like he’d never had to be on guard in his whole life. Bryce wasn’t an idiot – he didn’t voluntarily reveal the soft and vulnerable parts of himself – but he was careless, and didn’t protect them, either. Every opposition seemed to take him by surprise, as if the idea that someone might be willing to challenge him had never crossed his mind, and he would glance around at his boys, unprepared for it. 

It was a long time later when Diego realised what he thought he saw was wrong.

Bryce didn’t look to his boys to gauge their reactions; he looked to them to demand they take action.

And they did. Always.

Bryce offered a lopsided smile, lounging back in the armchair, his boardshorts and hair still damp with pool water, soaking chlorine into the fabric of the furniture.

“What?” he shrugged, all harmless interest. “You never mention them. Where are they?” He cocked his head, looking past Justin and his uncomfortably tight posture at Diego. “They just dump you off in a basket outside an orphanage or something? Get themselves locked up?” At the bar, Zach’s jaw tightened, and his gaze flicked up from his phone, warily, as Bryce raised an eyebrow. “Or maybe they got deported back to Mexico-“

Diego’s gaze snapped in his direction, the anger chilling his voice as cold and brittle as ice chips.

“I’m not Mexican.”

Monty sat forwards casually, his elbows propped on his knees. 

“You know she’s a lesbian?” he said, his tone flatly conversational and his eyes on the television, tracking his avatar as he tapped a double-shot firing pattern in the direction of Justin’s hiding place behind a burned-out military vehicle. “His aunt,” he clarified, when the question was met with silence. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “She’s pretty hot, too.”

Next to him, Diego’s eyes were black with fury, his grip on the lighter in his hand white-knuckled. On the television, Justin’s avatar made a desperate attempt to flee to better cover, and the screen flooded red as Monty’s bullets shattered his skull.

Lounging in the armchair, Bryce smirked.

“Oh, yeah?”

Diego clenched his jaw, and fumed.

“Dude, what the hell?” Diego demanded, a couple of hours later, as they headed out to the Jeep. The rage that had been simmering barely below the surface, torching every thought, barely quelled by the soothing lull of Bryce’s weed, burned bright and wild and warmed his cheeks. A couple of steps ahead of him, Monty slipped the keys from his pocket, thumbing through them calmly. If he had heard the question – and he had to have, anger added more decibels to Diego’s voice than he had intended, and the neighbourhood was quiet around them, the breeze soft and carrying only the sound of the garden shears that an elderly woman outside the grand old house on the corner used to prune the hedges – he offered no reaction or response.

Diego’s anger flared white.

Impulsively, he made a grab at the other boy, yanking him around to face him with a tight grip on his elbow with one hand, the other shoving between his shoulder blades.

“Monty-“

In the space of a breath, the other boy went wild. He snatched Diego with both hands, one fisted in the front of his t-shirt and the other gripping the base of his skull below his ear, and threw him against the side of the Jeep. Diego’s ears rung with the echo of the impact, and his shoulder throbbed, his grip on the other boy’s arm twisted and wrenched loose. Breath stuttering from his throat, he turned to look at Monty, and found the other boy’s expression not full of defensive anger or pride, but involuntary, unbridled fear. 

It was gone the instant he identified it, Monty slamming down every mental hatch and hurricane door so hard and hurriedly that Diego could practically hear the locks and bolts smashing into place. His expression was very still, and his voice was quiet, but it carried an involuntary tremor, a fissure in the otherwise forceful warning. 

“You do that again…”

Diego offered both palms, raised outwards, in contrite surrender.

“I’m sorry,” he said levelly, his anger all at once burned down to embers. Monty’s posture didn’t relax even a fraction of an inch, bristling and coiled in preparation to attack, and for a moment, Diego couldn’t be certain that the other boy saw him at all. It was as if he had jolted upright from a nightmare but couldn’t yet recognise his surroundings. Gingerly, Diego levered himself away from the Jeep, maintaining eye contact, his voice low and calm, as if addressing a snarling animal. “Dude. I’m sorry.”

Monty clenched his jaw, took a breath and exhaled through his nose, then disarmed the alarm on the Jeep.

Diego wasn’t certain it was a good idea to voluntarily close himself in a small space with the other boy, but the alternative was going back to the pool house to wait until Zach was ready to leave, and he would have risked a fist to the jaw from Monty over a smile from Bryce any day of the week.

Monty started the engine, but for a moment, sat quiet and unmoving behind the steering wheel, one hand on the emergency brake, and his gaze on the Rover, parked further up the sweeping driveway.

“Look. Here it is-“ he said, at length, and there was no anger in his voice, as Diego half-expected, but a sort of reluctant authority. “If you can’t learn to deal with Bryce, then you need to just stay the fuck away from him.” He cut a sideways glance at Diego. “Because I’m not smart enough to be able to protect you every time.”

Being friends with Bryce meant accepting being manipulated, and submitting to it voluntarily.

Sitting silent in the passenger seat of the Jeep as Monty reversed out of the driveway, feeling immature and chastised and helplessly unable to crush down the frustration that, with minimal effort, as always, Bryce inserted himself between them. Diego bit the inside of his lip.

“Do you think Bryce will want her to tell him why me and her have different last names?” he asked, quietly, as Monty stomped on the accelerator, spinning the tyres a little and earning himself a startled look from one of the Walker’s neighbours, out washing his Bentley on the driveway. Monty grinned, looking across at him, and answered matter-of-factly.

“I think if he asks Rosa anything she doesn’t wanna answer, she’ll snap his fucking dick off.”

Diego chuckled, and felt a little bit better.

“Yeah. Probably.”

When Bryce’s parents were in town and in a mood to actually supervise and consider intervening in his behaviour and activities, they went to the docks to drink. 

Most of the time, it was fun. They would sneak out with whatever alcohol they managed to swipe from their parents or buy from the Blue Spot Liquor Store with their fake ID’s – if Wally even bothered to card them at all, seeing as how he’d probably go out of business without their weekly contributions – then park up along the boardwalk, and walk down to the slips where the wealthy and elite of Evergreen county moored their boats. 

If they were feeling daring, they would head down the pier to the left, where the Sheriff moored his little fishing boat, because occasionally he would show up with a deputy or two and plans to go night fishing, or to motor out to the break at the edge of the bay and hunt around the rocks for crabs. Those nights turned into either a game of bravado, trying to talk their way out of trouble, or a frantic scatter, attempting to evade being detained with only one path back to the safety of the shore.

When they wanted to chill or get high, or both, they turned right, and headed along the pier where Walkers and their neighbours moored their pleasure boats. They were less likely to be happened upon at that end of the docks, and if any of the boats’ wealthy owners did stumble down that way, they were normally drunk or sneaking out to cheat on their spouse, and weren’t inclined to bother them. 

That night, they lounged at the end of the pier. Bryce sat at the prow of his father’s luxury leisure boat, his legs dangling over the water and his arms resting on the railing, a longneck in a brown paper bag in one hand. In the dark, it was almost impossible to make out the fading tawny bruises that stained his eye sockets. 

Justin, cradling the longneck’s twin in his lap, sat a couple of feet from Bryce on a crate of emergency rescue equipment by the bollard where the boat was tied on to the pier. Scott was smoking a skinny, crookedly rolled joint, laying back on the wooden bench that someone had installed for the rich retired boat owners who needed a little breather after the walk down the docks before hopping the short distance from the pier to their vessel. 

Sheri and Diego sat on either side of Monty – who wore twin black eyes behind his plastic rimmed glasses, a heavy purple ring of bruising on the right and a deep blue crescent slung beneath the left - at the pier’s end. They leaned back against the rail, and shared a bottle of tequila Monty had swiped from beneath the driver’s seat of his dad’s truck. He had wiped the rim on the sleeve of his varsity jacket before handing it to Sheri. 

Along the shoreline, the lights of the restaurants, cafes and stores twinkled merrily. Over the bay, the moon reflected on the softly rolling waves. 

It was Bryce’s idea to play truth or dare.

Diego managed – by a slim margin – not to roll his eyes when the first person he propositioned was Sheri.

“Truth,” Sheri smiled over the neck of the tequila bottle, before taking a small sip.

“OK,” Bryce grinned slowly, looking around at the rest of the group. “Who do you think is the cutest guy here?”

Diego silently willed her to pick anyone – literally anyone; the old fisherman drinking beer from a can and nursing a fishing pole at the other end of the damn pier, even – _anyone_ but Bryce. 

Sheri chuckled, shaking her head, and refused to be trapped, answering diplomatically.

“Oh, you’re all adorable,” she said, with a dimpled smile, her tone reminiscent of a kindergarten teacher addressing her pupils.

She leaned across to pass the tequila over Monty’s knees to Diego. Despite having driven him, Sheri and Scott to the foreshore, Monty was already edging toward tipsy. Diego reached to take the bottle, his knee bumping Monty’s as he moved, and the other boy stiffened, then shifted, re-establishing the distance between them. Diego didn’t think much of it. For someone as unapologetically tactile as he was, Monty could be weird about being touched. Monty kept his gaze fixed forward, and as he took a sip of tequila, the high proof liquor stinging the back of his throat, Diego noticed Bryce watching them. The other boy smirked at Diego, before shifting his gaze back to Sheri. 

“Come on, now,” Bryce chastised, tipping the neck of his beer bottle in her direction. “You picked truth,” he reminded her. “You have to tell us the truth.”

His smile was wide and inviting. Sheri cocked an eyebrow.

“Alright,” she said, shrugging her shoulders beneath her Liberty windbreaker, and answered plainly. “Then - Justin.”

For a second, it was silent.

It was the right answer – but it was the wrong answer, too.

Justin cast a wary glance at Bryce, a flare of embarrassment and panic brightening his cheeks. Sheri pursed her lips in an innocent smile, meeting Bryce’s gaze directly. Even Scott, who had already had bloodshot eyes and smelled of sticky sweet marijuana smoke when he slid into the back of the Jeep, slouching languidly, cast a wary glance at Bryce. 

Clutching the bottle of tequila, Diego felt like he was witnessing a motorway smash, in the seconds before impact. 

Beside him, abruptly shattering the silence, Monty snorted in a failed attempt to crush down his amusement, and burst into peals of laughter. Justin’s cheeks bloomed pink behind the brown paper bag he attempted to hide it with, taking a long, awkward chug. On the bench, gazing skyward at the tendrils of smoke coiling into the night air, Scott chuckled, shaking his head. Diego looked up at the tight set of Bryce’s jaw where he sat at bow of his father’s boat, worth at least three times the value of his Range Rover, and broke into a grin while Monty continued to shake with giggles next to him. 

“You said I had to tell the truth,” Sheri said, reasonably. Bryce cast an assessing glance at Justin, who turned quickly toward Scott, hiding the smile creeping at the corners of his mouth as he leaned over to take the joint the other boy offered. Choking down his amusement and adjusting his glasses, which had slid from the bridge of his nose as he shook with giggles, Monty grinned, and nodded his agreement.

“You did say that,” he reminded Bryce. 

Bryce raised an unamused eyebrow.

“Monty,” he said, his tone unmistakably crafted in the manner of a parent issuing a warning to a misbehaved child. “Your turn.”

Grin unfaltering, Monty curved his fingers beneath his chin to form the shape of a heart and raised his voice a to a saccharine falsetto. 

“Oh, I think the cutest boy here is Scott,” he said, bursting into laughter when Sheri pouted and punched his shoulder playfully. He waved a hand, slouching back casually against the pier railing. “Dare, dude,” he said. “I’ll do a dare.”

Bryce’s smile was sweet and rotten.

“I dare you to kiss someone here,” he said, his tone light as he swept his beer bottle in an arc, indicating to the group. “You can choose who, but the only rule is-“ He held up one finger. “It can’t be Sheri.”

Diego glanced sidelong at Monty. It was a trap, a twist and thrust of the barb Monty normally used to jab at the other boys, a reference to the degrading slurs he had learned through dogged repetition from his father. It was the worst thing that Bryce could have demanded, in the context of everything they all knew about Monty, and the ways that he was battered and ground down in the little green house at the bottom of the hill. 

Bryce glanced at Diego, and he knew then that the humiliation was intended for him, too – Bryce expected Monty to choose Diego, the dare inspired by Monty’s instinctive reaction to the casual bump of their knees. 

Diego wanted to say something, but Monty smiled, wild and dangerous. 

“Alright,” he said, unflinching as he looked up at Bryce. “I choose you.”

Diego blinked, surprised, and glanced at Bryce where he sat stiffly at the bow of the boat. 

Monty – who everyone called stupid, and who was certainly capable of living up to that label – had dodged the grenade that Bryce had unpinned and tossed in his direction. Not only that, he had snatched it with both hands, cooking it to run down the time to detonation, and lobbed it right back. Bryce had two choices – he could back out of the dare he himself had proposed, and appear a coward, or he could honour it, go through with it, and allow Monty to take all of the poisoned humiliation and shame that had been intended for him, and shove it right down his throat. 

Bryce – the king, _their_ king – couldn’t win. 

With all the swagger of someone unaware or unafraid of the danger right in front of them, Monty grinned.

“What?” he said, levering himself unsteadily to his feet with one hand gripping the pier railing and the other keeping his glasses from falling off as he swayed. “You worried your girlfriend’ll be jealous?”

Bryce scoffed, shaking his head, and took the tiny sliver of opportunity to save a little bit of face by reminding them all that he was well underway courting and successfully wooing Chloe Rice. 

Honestly, Diego felt sorry for the girl.

“Chloe has no reason to be jealous of anyone,” Bryce said, with calm certainty and a satisfied smile, but Monty only shook his head, his grin unrelenting and vicious, his eyes bloodstained with broken vessels, fiery and bruised. 

“I was talking about Justy.”

Justin choked on a mouthful of beer, spluttering, while Bryce’s eyes narrowed, unamused. Sheri and Scott were quiet, watching. As Justin swiped the beer from his chin with the back of his hand, Diego couldn’t help but notice that, despite the embarrassed flush that lit his cheeks at the jibe, and the tension in his shoulders, a by-product of the strain in the air around them as Bryce and Monty stared at each other, there was something in Justin’s expression that suggested a mismatched feeling. 

To Diego, it looked like relief. 

Sheri’s honestly offered praise had been swept aside and quickly forgotten, Bryce’s ire redirected. 

A little unsteady with alcohol, Monty stood, looking at Bryce, and waited. 

Humiliation, unfamiliar and rampaging with fury snapping at its heels, tightened Bryce’s grip on the longneck, crumpling the brown paper bag. 

Diego thought he should do something. The two boys were going to come to blows. Property was going to get damaged. Probably, one or both of them was going to end up in the water. And they were all going to pay for this – a stupid game of truth or dare – for a long time.

Abruptly, so quickly that he stumbled as he hopped off of the box he was sitting on to the weathered boardwalk of the pier, and crashed into more than stepped toward the other boy, Justin surged forward, and kissed Monty.

It was messy. Justin was still clinging to the longneck in one hand and Scott’s joint in the other, and neglected to steady himself against the other boy - so they collided, the sudden contact unexpected and uncontrolled, their teeth clacking awkwardly together as Justin’s mouth smashed against Monty’s. It lasted less than a full, breathless second. Stunned and moving jerkily, Monty stagged back a step as if he had been attacked, his hands tightening into defensive fists at his sides, his bruised eyes feverish and wild. Justin looked at him, clutching the beer bottle, wide-eyed and wary with a red mark near the top of his nose where it had impacted the bridge of Monty’s glasses. 

Above them, Bryce blinked, lips parted in surprise. 

“Oh, my goodness,” Sheri breathed.

From the prow of the boat, Bryce barked with laughter, and the tension in the air combusted, flashing to flame and dissipating in an instant. 

“Dude,” he chuckled, raising his beer in toast before taking a long swig. “What the hell, Justy?”

Justin just shrugged, bringing the joint to the corner of his mouth, and looked away.

They kept drinking. Scott produced another joint from the pocket of his varsity jacket to pass around. Monty was quiet when he sat back down. 

And they didn’t play any more truth and dare.

A little past one in the morning, after the bars and restaurants closed, they walked back down the pier to the boardwalk. Justin and Bryce headed for the Rover, Sheri and Scott crossed the street toward the sheltered bench to catch the next free county circuit bus that passed within a couple of blocks of the tree-lined streets where they lived, and Diego followed Monty to where he had parked the Jeep under one of the huge pines that lined the foreshore.

“That was weird,” Diego said casually, slowing to toss the empty tequila bottle into a trashcan, where it landed in the bottom with a hollow echo. “Have you and Justin ever…“

Monty scowled over his shoulder. 

“What?” he muttered, shaking his head. “No. The fuck?”

Diego shrugged lightly.

“Well, I mean – you guys _kissed_ , dude.” He smiled, raising his eyebrows when Monty cut a warning look in his direction. “I’m not judging, man,” he insisted, holding up his hands. “You’re my brother. I don’t care about that shit.” He quickened his step when Monty stormed ahead, hopping down from the curb into the parking lot. “I just want you to know that you can tell me, if you want to.”

Monty fumbled the keys from the pocket of his jeans. Standing at the driver’s side door of the Jeep, he turned the keys over in his hands distractedly. Beneath the streetlamp illuminating the parking lot, his lower lip was starting to bruise. Paired with the blackened hollows around his eyes, the light overhead cast him in ghoulish hues.

“It’s not like that,” he said, looking down at his hands, the pace of his explanation stuttering, rushed and dragging in fits and spurts. “I… me and Justin, we fight a lot. We’re friends with Bryce, but _we’re_ not friends, because…“ He trailed off involuntarily, unable to find the words, and chose another route. “That was just…” He hesitated, again, this time with uncertainty, as he glanced at Diego, standing by the rear corner of the Jeep. “It wasn’t a _kiss_.” He said. “It was, like, protection.”

Diego shook his head, confused.

“Protection?”

Monty shrugged. 

“Yeah,” he said, shuffling the keys in his hand, pinching the key to the Jeep between his fingers. “Like… like a diversion, you know?”

Later, Diego thought that, on some level, beneath the haze of the tequila and the weed, he understood. He had seen that sliver of relief in Justin’s expression when Monty challenged Bryce, drawing the other boy’s anger. And despite the tight coil of Monty’s fists at his sides as he stumbled back from Justin, there was a hint of looseness in his shoulders, beneath his varsity jacket, like he had been carrying something heavy, and it had been lifted from him.

Bryce laughing at them was easier to take than Bryce punishing them.

Maybe, if he wasn’t stupid, if would have made more sense at the time. 

“I do not know,” he said, puzzled but amused as he admitted, “I haven’t got a fucking clue what the hell you’re talking about.”

Monty shook his head, waving a hand.

“Just… just forget it.” He sighed, looking at the other boy with bleary, bloodshot eyes as he rubbed his forehead above his glasses. “How much did you have?”

“Tequila?” Diego clarified. “Maybe four shots.”

Monty nodded, and handed him the keys as he circled around the back of the Jeep toward the passenger side. 

“You win.”

Being Bryce’s friend meant Bryce always won – even when he lost. 

It meant accepting losses, because more and more, when it came to Monty choosing between them, Bryce won.

Diego tried not to dwell on it. Monty still did everything he’d always done – they hung out together, played video games and caught movies at the Crestmont, talked about sports and girls. They exchanged jokes and banter, and teased the other guys. But with increasing frequency, even when Bryce was in a foul mood, Monty stayed close to him. They didn’t take their leave, the way he might have done before, sitting out on the back quad until it was possible to exist in Bryce’s atmosphere without his rage irradiating the space so thoroughly they would need a Geiger counter to make a safe approach. 

Monty hadn’t stayed over since the night of his birthday, when Diego had woken in the morning to find that, somehow, the other boy had clambered from his top and tails position between Diego and the wall, and slipped out. Monty said he’d had to go to work, and Diego thought it was a lie, but he didn’t _want _to think that, so he tried to forget about it.__

__Still, it smarted when he heard in passing that Monty had spent a few nights sleeping in the pool house at the Walker’s, or when he showed up with a newer model phone to replace the one he had dropped and smashed in the locker room, a day after Bryce got the newest iPhone on its debut release date. It stung when, as they climbed down from the bleachers after a disappointing basketball game, and Diego asked if he wanted to hang out, Monty said he had other plans._ _

__Shoving the hurt down, Diego let Luke drag him up into a rowdy piggyback ride and laughed as they followed Sheri and Chloe to the parking lot. Despite that it required Chloe to run the passenger seat almost all the way forward to provide him with sufficient leg room, her own knees crammed against the glovebox, Luke, ever the gentleman, insisted that she sit up front in Sheri’s dad’s SUV, and then spent the whole drive over to Jeff’s showing Diego Facebook photos of the girl from Sacred Heart he had been talking to over the summer. It was sort of sweet, and Diego appreciated the distraction._ _

__He tried not to think about the fact that Monty _had other plans_ , or that Bryce was throwing a party that night. _ _

__By the time Monty showed up, unexpected and soaking wet, Justin trailing him down the stairs to Jeff’s parents’ basement, the molly had saturated every thought, feeling and nerve ending, and all Diego could do was smile as he watched Monty stand by the couch, where Sheri and Chloe had been for the last thirty minutes, Chloe laying with her head in Sheri’s lap and Sheri’s fingertip tracing a line from her forehead to her nose. On the next repetition, as Sheri’s touch reached the tip of Chloe’s nose, Monty reached down and started a new line at her forehead, following the same languid pattern. Chloe blinked up at him, and smiled languidly._ _

__Jeff slipped the small plastic baggie from his pocket – one pill left in the bottom corner, intended for Alex before he had bailed because of a stomach thing- and handed it to Justin as Leah tugged at Jeff’s other hand, pulling him toward the stairs. With his head laying on his arm on the tabletop where he sat beside Luke, every vibration from the other boy’s fingers tapping along with some kind of uneven poppy punk tempo playing through his headphones reverberating from his wrist to his shoulder and down his spine, Diego watched Justin shake the pill into his palm, break it in half with his thumbnail, and drop one of the little white crescents into Monty’s hand._ _

__Since the night on the pier, weeks passed now, Monty and Justin rarely spent time together. It wasn’t unusual. Monty had said it himself – they weren’t friends. Still, they seemed wary, hyperaware of maintaining a distance. No one said anything – Scott, Sheri and Diego hadn’t told anybody else what happened – and even Bryce seemed inclined to keep that evening in his personal collection, for now; specialised ammunition, sniper rounds customised for minimal effort and maximum damage, should he consider the need to arise._ _

__So far, as far as Diego knew, neither of the boys had given him cause to take aim._ _

__While Justin flopped onto the couch beside Sheri, Chloe lifting her feet to make space for him and then settling them across his knees, Monty slid onto the stool beside Diego, the other boy’s knee bumping his thigh as he reached for the bottle of water in Diego’s outstretched hand. The brush of his fingers echoed along Diego’s wrist and down his arm, spreading like a warm ripple through his chest._ _

__“Why’re you wet?” Diego asked, his own voice sounding both far away and too close to his face, all at once._ _

__Monty raised an eyebrow at him as he placed the half-moon pill on his tongue. He twisted the cap from the water bottle, and with one swallow, washed it down._ _

__“It’s raining,” Monty answered, simply. “And I had to change a tyre.”_ _

__It made sense._ _

__The rain. The tyre. Monty sitting next to him._ _

__Everything felt warm, and right, and Diego lost track of time in the space of a blink._ _

__When his conscious thoughts connected and synced with his visual input again, he realised he was tracing a shape on Monty’s arm._ _

__“That your dad?” he asked._ _

__Monty’s gaze slid from the screen of his phone, where he was reading a text message - **BRYCE$** stamped at the top of the conversation and the last bubble all in caps, Bryce’s standard texting style when he was pissed off, _DUDE IS JUSTIN WITH YOU??_ \- to his arm, resting on the table between them. Below the rolled sleeve of his plaid shirt, close to his wrist, a bruise the size of a thumbprint was pressed in deep plum and edged in blue._ _

__Monty locked the screen of his phone and shook his head._ _

__“No,” he said, watching Diego gingerly trace one edge of the water-stain bruise. Despite the languid calm in his expression, each blink unhurried, Monty’s jaw flexed, as if it took some measure of effort to resist the urge to curl his hand into a fist, to throw his elbow in Diego’s direction to shove off the touch. He seemed as uncertain as Diego was about when exactly the other boy’s fingertips had found their way to his skin. “That’s from the East County game.”_ _

__Diego frowned._ _

__Bryce had been frustrated – angry – last Friday night as their score fell further and further behind, and Monty wasn’t the first one to fail in the execution of a play that Bryce had called, but he was the one who tipped the other boy’s irritation into rage. They had argued in the moments after the visiting team had scored another try, Monty’s grip faltering enough as the result of a loosely thrown elbow to his midsection that the opposition player had been able to break the tackle and pass the ball off to a teammate. Diego had watched from a distance as Monty threw his hands up, turning away from Bryce to return to his starting position, when the other boy had caught him by the arm and dragged him back, hauling him so close that the grills of their helmets clashed, his hand locked around Monty’s arm between them, anchoring him in place, although Monty made no attempt to escape, accepting whatever Bryce hissed at him through the metal framework of their face masks, bristling but obedient._ _

__After the game, while the other boys lamented their loss and agreed to meet at the navy pier later to drown their sorrows, Monty had been uncharacteristically quiet, distracted by his phone. Or at least, he had acted that way. By the time he actually started removing his gear, toeing off his cleats and tugging his jersey over his head, a few minutes after Bryce slung his arm around Scott’s shoulders and laughed at a joke as they left, Diego was the only other person left in the locker rooms._ _

__“Dude…” he hissed through his teeth, his throat thick with guilt and horror. The bruise darkening the other boy’s side from his hip to the bottom of his rib cage was so deep that it looked rotten, a black stain the size of a brick, mottled and edged unevenly in ugly hues of purple, red and blue. Monty’s forehead creased with a grimace and he clenched his jaw as he manoeuvred his pads off over his head. Dumping them on the bench beside him, he couldn’t ignore the directness of Diego’s stare, and shook his head without looking at the other boy._ _

__“I left my baseball bat in the kitchen, so…” he shrugged, his voice flat and quiet. “My bad.”_ _

___My bad_._ _

__Diego had a sudden, fleeting urge to tighten his grip on Monty’s arm, sink his fingers into the bruise, change its shape and colour so that it wasn’t all Bryce. It felt strangely harsh, a sharp edge amongst the loose flow of his thoughts, and it was gone as abruptly as it appeared._ _

__He brushed the pad of his thumb over the bruise on the other boy’s arm, feather-light._ _

__“Why do you let him do that?”_ _

__Monty didn’t seem to need to ask which _him_ he was referring to. _ _

__Or maybe it didn’t matter, because the answer was the same, either way._ _

__He paused, not hesitating, but searching for words that would make sense, the bridge of his nose crinkling with a frown beneath his freckles, scattered across his cheeks in an eclectic pattern, like a fistful of stars._ _

__“I don’t know,” he admitted, finally._ _

__It felt like the truth, and a lie._ _

__“You know,” Monty said, reaching across with his spare hand to turn his phone screen-down when it vibrated with another text message. He left his other arm beneath Diego’s hand, turned palm up, veins tracking blue lifelines beneath his skin. “In Mexico, the cartels, when they’re trying to control, like, the press, or politicians, or the police, they don’t just bribe them, or threaten them. They give them a choice.” His eyes were oddly bright, with a kind of vicious fascination. “They can take money, or they can be killed.” He said, quietly. “They can be dirty, or dead.”_ _

__Diego thought that he wasn’t talking about cartels._ _

__Being Bryce’s friend meant being dirty, or dead._ _

__Diego shook his head where it rested in the crook of his arm._ _

__“Where did you learn that?”_ _

__Monty looked down at the hand on his arm._ _

__“My _abuela_ ,” he said, and Diego blinked, confused. He didn’t think Monty had met any of his grandparents. “She used to be a history professor, at a college.” Monty paused, as if the idea was somehow bewildering. “When she retired, she started doing podcasts about war crimes.” He lifted his shoulder in a shrug, and his arm shifted beneath Diego’s hand. “I guess the war on drugs is still a war.”_ _

__Diego closed his eyes, and thought of the audiobook that he had downloaded; some dry, technical text book about sociology. He didn’t understand most of the theories, but it had been recorded as part of the community participation volunteer program at the California Institution for Women, and it didn’t matter what the words meant. He just plugged his earbuds into his phone, tucked it beneath his pillow, and fell to sleep listening to his mother’s voice._ _

__“Monty,” Justin called from the couch, and Diego startled, blinking his eyes open as Monty turned._ _

__Sheri and Chloe were waving in beckon. They had rearranged themselves, Chloe sitting on the couch with her legs crossed Indian style and Sheri and Justin on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, where they had easy access to the bowl of Doritos Jeff had left out. Justin dug his hand in and retrieved a handful, which Sheri picked a chip from._ _

__“It’s your turn, dude.”_ _

__Monty slid from the stool, and his arm slipped from beneath Diego’s hand._ _

__The absence felt strange, like a part of himself had shifted._ _

__“Your turn for what?” Diego asked._ _

__Monty reached to retrieve his phone, tucking it into his pocket, and lifted his shoulder in a shrug._ _

__“To tell a story.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to comfortwriter28 and closetfascination for all of your help and support.
> 
> This chapter begins to lead in to some scenes for Paper Dolls, which is now live [ here ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27807904/chapters/68079826)
> 
> The song reference for the chapter (and fic) title is [ Rodeo ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-yRN55iaQY) by Lil Nas X. This version features Nas, but I recommend the album version with Cardi B.
> 
> The last chapter of this fic will look at a speculative explanation for Diego's emotional reaction to Winston revealing his relationship with Monty in s4.
> 
> Thank you for reading and commenting!


	4. Sorry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A speculative explanation for Diego's emotional reaction to Winston telling him that he and Monty had been together before Monty's death.
> 
> Set in canon the day of the verdict in the Baker case/the day after the Hobo Hotel confrontation.
> 
> Set in the Dizzy timeline the Saturday in between the cancellation of baseball season and Plaster Cast, when Monty lied to his father about having practice to get out of work. 
> 
> Because I was worried that the chronology wasn't clear, the italicised sections happened on Thursday night - the night before the Hobo Hotel scene in canon.

Monty showed up on the day that Bryce and Justin were arrested.

Diego was in the kitchen, marinating the chicken that Rosa had set out for dinner, when he saw him through the kitchen window. Monty stood on the driveway that ran between the fence and the left edge of the duplex that occupied the front half of the shared block, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans.

In and of itself, his abrupt and unannounced appearance; it wasn’t a surprise.

Neither was the fact that he was wearing his white and navy baseball tee, despite that the season had been officially cancelled a week earlier.

Or that it was a Saturday, which he normally spent working with his dad on the hospital demolition project, when he didn’t have practice or a game.

Or even the blackberry bruise that spread from his eye socket and crept down his cheek.

It was the fact that he was there at all, after the last text Diego had sent him.

_you’re just as fucking stupid as people say_

It was the kind of insult Diego would have thrown punches over, if it had been directed at him, and he had regretted it the moment he sent it, watching the little blue bubble pop up, last in the caravan, trailing after all of the others he had sent in a rapid, furious string. 

Monty left it on read. 

“Dude,” Diego sighed when they met at the door, and Monty just shook his head.

“Can we not?” he asked, his voice threadbare. His jeans were rumpled, as if he’d been wearing them for a couple of days, and his hair was a mess of unruly licks and peaks. “Please?”

He felt guilty for it, but Diego took the reprieve. 

Because that bruise, it was Diego’s fault. 

Monty stepped inside, but hesitated in the front hall, as if the layout of the duplex was unfamiliar to him, or that level of polite regard had ever existed between them. He averted his gaze, looking at the floor, and steadfastly refused to acknowledge Diego watching him. There was less than three feet of distance between them – Diego could have touched the other boy without even fully extending his arm – but it may as well have been leagues or lifetimes.

_Two days ago, Rosa had appeared in his bedroom doorway as he was buttoning his pale green Walplex uniform shirt. His Thursday night shift started at five, and Rosa always made sure that she got home in time for him to take her truck. She was still wearing her hi-vis work shirt and steel-toed boots, the baby hairs at her temples curling in fine, untidy coils from wearing a hard-hat most of the day. She had leaned against the doorframe casually, but there was tension in her shoulders, and a tightness around her eyes._

_“I haven’t seen Monty around in a little while,” she said, her tone pointedly conversational, like artificial sweetener. “Everything OK with you two?”_

_Honestly, he didn’t know the answer to that._

It had been almost six months since the night at Jeff’s, and he didn’t remember a hell of a lot of what they had talked about, most of it scrubbed away in the swooping dive of the come-down the following morning, but he remembered that Monty hadn’t tried to stop him from touching the bruise on his arm. It was an odd memory, glazed with the aftereffects of the molly, and felt otherworldly, because Monty was almost never willing to submit to contact he didn’t initiate. 

Monty didn’t bring it up, or seem bothered by it, afterwards. He agreed to give Diego a ride to school or practice when he asked, weight trained with him as they prepared for selection for the wrestling team, and gave him a copy of the answers for the Ancient Rome history test Mrs Baxter always rolled out without fail, because she was apparently yet to determine how the boys from the baseball and football teams scored near-perfect A’s year on year. They talked, around and under and over the top of things, words to fill the silence, but they didn’t _talk_ , not like that night, or the way they used to.

Something had changed.

“Shit’s fucked up, huh?” Diego said to Monty, his tone edging toward apologetic, but stopping at its threshold. _Sorry_ felt as if it weighed a tonne, more than he could lift without faltering or risking injury, and more than Monty looked as if he would be able to bear. And yet, at the same time, it felt undeniably fragile, too small and brittle to be of any use at all. 

“Is it?” Monty muttered.

It was a deliberate non-answer, a hand-crafted deterrent, not unlike the response he had offered Rosa. 

_“Sure,” Diego had shrugged, turning to retrieve his name tag from the bedside cabinet. He kept his eyes down, focussed on pinning the badge to his shirt. “Shit’s just kinda weird, with the trial, y’know?”_

Diego thought maybe whatever was going on with Monty, it had something to do with Hannah Baker, and the case that her parents had raised against the school district. He thought for certain that it had something to do with Bryce, and what he had done to her. 

When the tapes were released online, Diego was surprised. He hadn’t thought they existed, despite the rumours. It seemed a cruel and vengeful thing, to weaponize a death that way, but he hadn’t known Hannah. They had PE together, one semester, and she was the kind of girl who stood back in team games, preferring not to try at all, rather than try and fail; his recollection of her summed up in a vague impression of a dark-haired girl standing awkwardly at the back of the volleyball court, where there was little chance a ball would ever come close, her arms folded protectively over her chest. 

It was an anxious, morbid kind of relief, listening to those tapes, hearing familiar names spoken by a dead girl, but not his own. 

Afterwards, Diego wasn’t sure how to feel about Zach. Or Justin, who disappeared for months and then returned like a wind-burned spectre, battered but determined, to wreak destruction on his former friends, and to invite it upon himself. 

Diego hated Bryce for what he had done, but then, he’d always hated Bryce. 

And it didn’t matter that Diego wasn’t named on the tapes. Or that Monty wasn’t, either. 

The damage rippled far beyond those thirteen reasons, and Bryce’s unwitting confession.

“I guess Bryce had a lot to say about it,” Diego said, as much to provoke a reaction as anything. Monty’s subdued stillness was unfamiliar and unsettling. The other boy was practiced at folding down everything he felt like intricate origami, until it fit behind a mask of indifference, but this wasn’t the same. Normally, all of those delicate and careful folds were still there – it was impossible to make the mask entirely seamless, not when it was made up of broken shards and sharp edges - and he knew how to read its construction. 

Now, Diego couldn’t see any of the perforations. All of those delicate things had been crushed in his fist and shoved down too far. 

Monty only shrugged.

“He didn’t, actually,” he said, averting his gaze, edging around the border of an apology, as Diego had. “I didn’t end up talking to him.” He glanced away, along the length of the hall. “I haven’t seen him since that brawl.”

_That brawl_.

All of them, friends and foes and both at once, a seething mass of violence and betrayal, battering one another against the walls and the floor in the hallway by Bryce’s locker – and all for Bryce. 

As always.

Everything was such a fucking mess. 

_“Maybe you could see if he wants to come over for dinner?” Rosa had suggested, and at the time, Diego’s first thought, unvoiced, unwelcome, was **why bother?**_

After the tapes had come out, Diego had chosen a side. 

He knew that others had, too. Zach. Scott. 

Monty hadn’t, but not making a choice was the same as making one. Not opposing Bryce was equivalent to supporting him. 

They didn’t talk about it, but mostly, that was because Monty was barely around, anymore. 

Outside of class and practice, Diego scarcely saw the other boy. Monty kept close to Bryce, and away from everyone else, ditching school in the middle of the day, ducking out for a period or two and then showing up again, later, when he might have been missed if he couldn’t be accounted for. He was busy in the evenings, and tired in the mornings. From a distance, he seemed to be worn thin and frayed, but rather than anger, which had always boiled just below the surface for Monty, glowing white hot behind those carefully crafted seams in his armour and brightening the eyes of the mask to red embers, there was only ash and coils of smoke, the reserves burned down to soot and desperation. 

He avoided Diego, like his life depended on it. 

When he thought about it, Diego suspected that whatever was shoving them away from one another had started before the trial. 

In the dark place, deep inside himself, where he pushed down the things he didn’t want to think about - like that day that his mother and Rosa had fought over the CPS call for the boy with the blue eyes and the robot toy - he thought he knew why.

But suspecting _why_ felt small and inconsequential, compared to the familiar ache of being rejected. It felt like being back in elementary school again, when he had sat by himself in the cafeteria, belonging to no one, and powerless to do anything about it. 

He thought it would have been easier if he and Monty had had a fight. At least they would have something to hang their apologies from. A line in the sand to move past. Instead, the distance clung to them like a shroud, heaving and growing and unrelenting. 

Diego spent his spare time with Luke and Beecher, and the other guys from the football team, and pretended that he didn’t feel pierced with betrayal, every time he saw Monty at Bryce’s side. 

_Rosa had never tried to insert herself into their friendship, and when Diego had looked at her in question, she shook her head, shrugging guiltily._

_“I need to call his dad, today,” she explained, uncomfortably. “He showed up to site late and loaded again, and I need to issue him a formal warning.” Rosa looked down at her hands. “So, I figured, maybe, Monty might appreciate an opportunity to get out of the house for a little while.”_

_The shadows of unspoken things lingered between them, and he had nodded, extending his open hand toward her to dash them away._

_“Yeah,” he said, quickly, as Rosa dropped the key to her truck in his palm. “I’ll text him.”_

_And he had, from the front seat of the truck, sitting in the parking lot outside of the Walplex, in the far corner of the lot where the store manager insisted the staff park to make space for customers nearer to the entrance, even though some of the girls who worked the registers and in the pharmacy department were afraid to walk the extra distance to their cars at night. Sometimes, Chloe would wait below the lights of the store’s green and white signage, focussed on her phone as if she had to take care of something before she headed home, but it hadn’t escaped his notice that, whatever that important thing was, she set it aside when she saw him, and would tuck her phone into her pocket to walk beside him across the dark parking lot._

_Her little yellow Volkswagen was missing from its usual space._

_She had testified in court earlier that day._

_Sitting in the truck, Diego had pushed away the acknowledgement of how odd it felt, how deliberate and forced, to tap out what should have been a casual text._

_**hey man. Feels like its been forever since I saw you. wanna hang out? I get off work at nine** _

_Based on the speed and brevity of Monty’s reply, which chimed as he climbed from the truck, it took far less thought or care to craft._

_**can’t. i gotta go talk to bryce** _

_Diego’s anger had flared, a blinding, emerald green flame, incinerating the reason he had texted in the first place._

_His responses were like a Gatling gun fuelled by black powder and fury, cranked out mechanically and in rapid succession, as he stormed across the parking lot._

_**really??  
what the actual fuck is it going to take for you to realise what a piece of shit he is??  
he’s never gonna let you take justins place  
and the fact that you even want that??  
you’re just as fucking stupid as people say** _

_Beneath the last message, in faded grey text:_

_**Read 16:57** _

And then nothing.

In the space not taken up by regret for losing his temper, melancholy grew, as Diego realised that Monty would rather take the abuse for his choice than reconsider. 

Monty would always choose Bryce. Even when he shouldn’t. 

And now, he was here.

It felt strange, because normally, Monty was quite happy to stroll right inside as if he lived there, and Diego had made the gesture only once, the first Sunday after they met, when Monty came over to play video games, but he waved his hand, awkwardly, inviting the other boy in. Reciprocating his unease, Monty went as far as the living room, and hesitated there, warily, glancing away uncertainly, as if he would rather flee, when Diego nodded for him to follow him to his bedroom. 

_What the fuck happened to you?_ Diego wanted to ask. _Whatever it is, it’s infected everything, and I hate it_.

In his room, Monty sat on his bed and scooted back against the wall, but paused there. Normally, if he hadn’t simply thrown himself carelessly across the mattress, leaving Diego to take a seat at his desk, he would lounge with his feet against the headboard so that Diego could lay next to him, head and feet facing the opposite direction, the way they had when they were younger. Now, he simply sat with his knees raised and his elbows resting on them, as if he might need to get up again in a hurry, or he didn’t want Diego to come too close. The discomfort was contagious, and Diego perched on the edge of the mattress, glancing uncertainly at the other boy. 

“Is that from the other night?” he asked, tracing the smudged, watercolour edges of the bruise with his eyes only this time, his hands restless on his knees. “Rosa calling your dad?”

Monty shook his head.

“No,” he said, plainly. “He was just drunk and pissed off.”

It was a lie designed to protect him, and it made Diego’s heart feel as if it were crumbling in on itself, because Monty never lied about his father or what he did or why. 

Diego lifted one hand from his lap and nudged Monty’s knee. 

“Look, stay here, tonight,” he said, when the other boy looked at him. “You look like you could use a decent night’s sleep,” he added, tilting his head, and offered an apologetic shrug. “And that’s what I was texting you for, anyway. Before I lost my shit.”

Monty didn’t move from where he was sitting, but he tipped his knee away from Diego’s hand. 

“I can’t.”

Diego wrestled down the frustration that attempted to claw up and out of his throat, desperation whipping it to frenzy. 

“Why?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice even, failing to add enough honey to balance out the bitterness as he twisted to face the other boy more directly. “Because Bryce would be mad? Fuck him, man.”

Monty just shook his head, looking anywhere else.

“It’s not Bryce,” he insisted. 

“Then what?” Diego implored, a pleading strain to his tone. “We’ve barely spoken for weeks. I know you’re avoiding me – that something’s wrong.” He tried to catch Monty’s eye, couldn’t quite manage it. “You’re my best friend. If I did something wrong, I want to make it right.”

Monty’s jaw flexed, the way it did when he stamped and battered the things he didn’t want to feel into submission, when they were too big and untameable for the space he attempted to cage them in.

“You can’t,” he said, softly.

It sounded like defeat. 

“Why?” Diego asked, reaching again for Monty’s knee when the other boy titled his face away, gripping there this time, insistently. “I’m not just gonna give up, man. I want to try.”

Monty didn’t say anything. 

He looked down at Diego’s hand on his knee. 

And then, quietly and calmly, Monty leaned forward, and kissed him. 

It wasn’t sudden, Diego recognised it a half-breath before it happened, so it was not like the surprised clash of teeth between Justin and Monty that night on the pier, but shock smashed through every other thought like a spooked animal, kicking and bellowing, frantically grasping for some kind of sense, some semblance of reason. This was Monty. _Monty_. His best friend, his brother, the first person who had chosen him and the one he trusted more than anybody.

The kiss lasted less than two seconds – existed in the space between two heartbeats – and then Monty sat back, looked at him, and then looked away. 

Diego struggled to corral his thoughts and slow the thunder of his heartbeat in his ears.

“I,” he choked on the attempt. His lips felt numb where Monty’s mouth had been a moment earlier. “I love you, dude. But I’m not-“

“I know,” Monty muttered, and shrugged, the hint of a masochistic smile tugging at the edge of his mouth as his gaze flickered in Diego’s direction, but only for a moment, fleeing across the room almost instantly. “So, you see the problem…”

Diego had no idea what to say. Monty seemed as tightly wound as he had ever seen him, so much crushed down inside of him that he might spray shrapnel across the room without warning, but also, in a way, there was something _peaceful_ about him. Like he had thrown himself off of a cliff, and now, all there was to do was fall. 

“Was that…” Diego hesitated, licking his lower lip anxiously, and suppressed a shudder at the sudden jolt across his nervous system when he tasted spearmint mouthwash that wasn’t his. “Was that the first time you… did that?”

“No,” Monty seemed almost amused, but there was a bitterness to it, a sadness seeping at the edges, as he rolled his eyes and flopped sideways on the mattress, laying with his head resting on one edge of Diego’s pillow. “That was fucking Foley.”

Oh.

Diego thought of the way that Monty’s fists had clenched, afterwards. The flash of anger, as if Justin had taken something from him, and he was both relieved and hurt to have lost it. 

Justin – who was not the person the dare had been posed to.

“Does anyone else know?” Diego asked, because he couldn’t quite force his mouth to form around a different question. “Does Bryce?”

_Do you feel this way about him, too_?

Monty shook his head.

“No,” he said and, recognising the question Diego really meant to ask, added, “I don’t feel like this. About him.” Monty’s gaze flicked to his face, but didn’t quite settle on his eyes. “Just you.”

Diego felt strange and guilty for the swell of gratification that this, whatever it was and as much as it scared him, was something that was not for Bryce. Carefully, half-expecting Monty to protest, he turned and lay beside the other boy. The mattress was narrow enough that they touched – shoulder, elbow, hip, knee – and as Monty stared up at the ceiling beside him, Diego thought that the heartbeat he could hear echoing in his ears might have belonged to the other boy, and not him.

Laying there, the part of his brain responsible for generating daydreams snatched desperately at solutions. Was it really so unfathomable, the idea of being together, that way? He trusted Monty, he loved him, never like _that_ , but was that really so far away from what they had, and what they were, now?

He tried to imagine what it would be like.

Walking the hallways of Liberty, elbowing each other and laughing at some stupid joke about Marcus crashing and burning on his latest date, and when their hands brushed against one another, they would thread their fingers together between them, Monty’s knuckles rough with scars beneath his fingertips.

Celebrating a win on the field, not by running and slamming bodily into one another, laughing as their helmets clashed, a kind of joyous demolition derby; but by walking toward each other, unstrapping their helmets as they went, tugging them off and discarding them to the pitch as they met at the centre line, Monty’s gloved hands grasping his hips or cradling the base of his skull, their mouths pressed together, and the team and the crowd around them.

Taking turns sipping from a flask at the Homecoming Dance, the way they always did, but this time, he could feel it secreted in the inside pocket of Monty’s suit jacket where their bodies touched, Monty’s hand at the base of his back and his head resting on his shoulder, the lights overhead painting flashes of purple and blue over them and the other dancers. 

Warm and breathless in that little alcove at the top of the stairs at Charlie’s house, the bubble-gum beat of a pop song and the ebb and flow of party chatter below them, and instead of Angie Romero’s hand at the open fly of his jeans, it was Monty’s, the scent of her jasmine and sandalwood perfume replaced by the lime undertones of Monty’s cologne, the dispassionate kiss she had pecked at the edge of his jaw now Monty’s mouth, hot and urgent against his throat.

On his bed, like they were now, Monty beneath him, sweat clinging to his hairline and beading alone his spine, one hand clasped bruisingly tight at Monty’s hip, the other coming to rest on the back of his neck, soothing and restraining, because Monty would do this the way he did everything else – wildly, and in desperate need of someone else to take control.

“Do you want to try again?”

Monty turned his head on the pillow to look at him, lips parted and eyes rounded with surprise. Diego tipped his head to meet his gaze.

“You kinda caught me by surprise, before,” Diego offered, and he could feel the tremor in the other boy’s hand where his knuckles brushed his own between them. Monty glanced at his mouth and swallowed anxiously.

“What happens if it’s still not OK?”

Diego shook his head calmly, despite that his pulse raced in his throat. He wasn’t sure if it would make either of them feel better or worse, but he ran the pad of his thumb along Monty’s unsteady index finger and, when the other boy didn’t resist, threaded their fingers together. 

It felt unfamiliar, but also sort of safe.

“Nothing,” he said. “We just be like we’ve always been.”

Monty turned his gaze back to the ceiling, his grip flexing involuntarily around Diego’s fingers with a flush of panic that showed in the twitch of his jaw. 

“What happens if it is OK?”

Somehow, it was the harder answer to give. 

There were a million questions and considerations between a kiss and a relationship, if that’s what he had even imagined. And he couldn’t assume that was what Monty wanted, either. Maybe all he was after was a once off – a chance to explore whatever he felt, and be done with it. Or a casual fuck buddy, friends with benefits who did each other a favour from time to time. Whatever it was, or could be, maybe it would be just between them, a secret from the other guys, because _jesus_ , this was _Monty_ …

All of it felt terrifying and surreal to consider. 

“I don’t know, man,” Diego answered, honestly, and turned his head to mirror the other boy. 

They lay like that, looking up at the ceiling, fingers tangled between them and breathing quietly beneath the weight of infinite answerless questions. Diego felt terrified, both of things changing and of things staying the same, and reflexively, he squeezed Monty’s hand. After a moment, Monty squeezed back. 

“It’s not even, like, the sex, or whatever, that scares the fucking shit out of me,” Monty said, quietly, his gaze tracing the cracks in the plaster above them. “It’s all the other stuff.”

The things they already did – hanging out, going to the Crestmont, driving into school together, borrowing each other’s’ clothes when they went camping – but different. 

The things he imagined - holding hands in the hallway, kissing on the football field, dancing together – like they were normal.

Being who he was, in front of the people who knew him, and not apologising for it.

Diego thought that Monty being afraid of those things – those everyday things, that couples did everywhere, all the time, without fear or shame – had something to do with the fact that his father would probably be more enraged by the idea of his son walking another boy to class and kissing him goodbye then he would to know that they were actually having sex.

And that was what brought the daydream tumbling down.

Monty turned his head to look at Diego.

“I don’t want to try again.”

It was a fucking lie, and Diego felt swarmed with a sudden rush of anger and humiliation. He knew that it was stupid and irrational. He had known how the other boy felt for all of five minutes. He didn’t even know how long Monty had felt that way – months? _Years_? – and had kept it crushed down inside. Had many nights had the other boy lay next to him on this mattress, top and tails, and let Diego think that it was because he didn’t want to go home? That Diego had been making his life easier, somehow, by being his friend. 

He had only made things worse. And he didn’t even know it. 

Monty sat up, and instinctively, Diego tightened his grasp on his hand as he moved to sit as well.

“Dude, it’s alright-“

Monty cut him off with a harsh whisper, his features folding into a frown. 

“ _Don’t do that_.” 

When Diego only looked at him, confused and desperate, Monty shook his head, tugging his hand free, and scooted to the end of the mattress, creating more distance between them. 

“Don’t try to make it OK. It’s not fucking OK,” he insisted. “I’m not OK. Alright?” Monty tugged at his hair, agitated. “I’m a fucking mess. And even talking about this is so fucking _fucked up_.”

Diego raised his eyebrows.

“C’mon, man,” he said. “Firstly, it’s not fucked up.” He shrugged lightly. “And secondly, even if it was, even if you are a mess – I am, too. I mean, you know my moms took out my dad with a fucking shotgun.” A cautious smile dimpled his cheek. “I can deal with fucked up.”

It was a horror show, but it was all he’d ever known. And anyway, his best friend revealing he had feelings for him paled in comparison to sitting across the table from his mother in the prison visitors centre and watching her chuckle as she told him how, seven months pregnant, she had felt him kick inside of her at the boom of the shotgun blast. 

He would take a kiss and an admission of love.

Monty just shook his head.

“Dude, I can’t-“ he bit the words off there, clenching his jaw.

Monty looked back at Diego, as if pleading for him to understand, to hurt him and protect him and stop him from hurting himself. Diego didn’t know what to do, with any of it, and after a moment, it was gone, all the fractured pieces swept up and tidied away, somewhere far beneath the flat, bland fragment of a smile that Monty offered. 

“Look, I didn’t… I don’t want anything from you,” he said. “I just wanted you to know that I didn’t choose Bryce. Not over you.” He lifted his shoulder in a shrug, his hands twisting together in his lap. “I know you think he, like, owns me or something-“

“He does,” Diego said, helpless to trap the words before they tumbled out. 

Monty looked back at him, over his shoulder. His eyes were dark and sad. 

“Yeah,” he said, quietly. “Well, so do you.” He looked down at his hands and seemed to have to prise his fingers apart, curling them instead into loose, familiar fists. “Being owned by him might be enough to get me through to graduation.” He kept his face turned away, so that Diego couldn’t see the bruise that stained the other side. “Being owned by you might get me killed.”

Diego didn’t know what to say. It felt as if the whole world had tipped sideways. He knew that the jokes and innuendo that Monty used to needle the other guys was a watered-down version of the hate that his father scorched him with. But he had never realised that the constant veneer of sneering insults dismissed as locker room banter were both a disguise and a punishment, a voluntary waterboarding, to brutalise and imprison the part of himself that he was desperate to hide. 

Diego felt callous, and stupid, for sitting next to the other boy, calling him his _best friend_ , and never seeing who he was.

Without saying anything further, Monty levered himself up from the bed, and Diego looked up at him, startled.

“Where are you going?”

Monty’s shoulder tugged upward in a shrug as he turned toward the door.

“Home,” he said, simply. 

Diego shook his head. Normally, he would have reached for the other boy’s hand, grasped his wrist to stop him, but he hesitated. It suddenly felt both cruel to want to touch Monty, and wrong to refrain. 

“But your dad…”

Monty smiled, or attempted to. Even to him, it seemed to register as morbid and masochistic to try. 

“What’s he gonna do to me that he hasn’t done a hundred times before?”

He said it with no affect, just a statement of fact, and it was both horrifying and undeniably true. There were only so many ways to hurt a person, and eighteen years was a long time to explore them all. As it turned out, the simplest were the most effective. Fists, boots, and hate.

“Stay here,” Diego said, his cheeks flaring with guilt, as the thought that had crossed his mind in the truck that night, spiteful and venomous, when Monty had chosen Bryce over him, cut through him. _I hope he turns you away_.

Monty chuckled, and it was brittle and poisoned.

“What, and pretend nothing happened? Top’n’tails, like the good old days?” He turned toward Diego, and then away again, tugging at his hair, agitated. “Seriously, dude. You want me in your bed after _that_?” He gestured vaguely, and seemed afraid to use a term of reference any more specific. “Because you shouldn’t.” He swallowed uncomfortably, and all at once looked frightened and ill. “If you asked me to try again, I don’t think I would say ‘no’.”

Diego’s fingers curled, clutching the edge of the mattress.

Everything was such a fucking mess. 

“So then don’t,” he said, softly. “Or I won’t ask.” He got up from the bed, but didn’t step toward the other boy, certain that if he got too close, Monty would fly to pieces. “Whatever, man. Just stay.”

Monty shook his head.

“I-“ he cut himself off there, biting his lip, and when he spoke, it didn’t seem to be what he had intended to say. “I need you to promise not to say anything to anyone.”

“Of course, man,” Diego agreed, without hesitation. “If anyone asks, I’ll say I didn’t know.” It felt an oddly worded promise, when he heard it aloud, but he shook it off, pleading, “Just stay, OK?”

Monty was on the other side of the room, outside of his reach, even if he had wanted to try. He backed away from Diego, shaking his head, as if he didn’t trust himself to speak.

When he reached the doorway, he paused and raised his hand, two fingers extended in a half-wave. 

“See you at school.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and commenting! This is the last part to finish off this mini-fic. I hope that the ending was maybe a little bit of a surprise, but also makes sense in the context of the fic and canon.
> 
> Not gonna lie, the self-indulgent part of me has definitely thought about using this scene to splinter off a canon/Dizzy divergent alternative ending and save Monty from himself. Ahh, daydreams! 
> 
> The song that this chapter is named after is [ Sorry ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEnCoocmPQM) by Halsey
> 
> Thank you to [ comfortwriter28 ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/comfortwriter28/pseuds/comfortwriter28) and [ closetfascination ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/closetfascination/pseuds/closetfascination) for all of your help. If you're not already reading their fics, you should check them out :)
> 
> The next fic, Paper Dolls, has started - I've written chapters for weekly updates through to the end of the year, and at the moment am posting on Tuesdays.
> 
> Thank you again for reading x


End file.
